Organization: Dunkin' Brands

Year: 2015

Resolved: Resolved: Shareholders encourage the Corporation to commit to utilizing at least 75 percent cage-free eggs by volume within their supply chain within the next 5 years.

Supporting Statement:Supporting Statement: We believe that addressing supply chain issues is key to a corporation's long term viability. If corporations are unaware of supply chain issues, the ramifications of negative movements in the stock price could prove inevitable. A key supply chain issue with the corporation is the origination of chicken eggs. In the United States, millions of hens are currently kept in battery cages, cages so small they do not have room to spread their wings. They are kept in filthy conditions, and do not receive veterinary care. Cage-free hens are able to walk around, and they have two to three times the amount of space as those kept in cages. The Center for Food Safety states: 'Extreme intensive confinement can have potentially serious public health and food safety implications and should be phased out as is being done in the European Union.' The largest study ever performed comparing Salmonella risk in battery cage versus cage-free egg production found that factory farms crowding hens in tiny cages had up to 25-times greater odds of being infected with Salmonella than cage-free flocks. Whereas, Dunkin Brands Group (the corporation) has made the pledge to acquire 5 percent of its eggs from cage-free sources by the end of 2013, but there has been no public announcement addressing this commitment Whereas, this proposal is asking the corporation to increase this percentage of cage-free eggs being used to at least 75 percent within the next 5 years. Whereas, a competitor within the industry, Burger King Corporation, has pledged to transition its US supply chain to 100 percent cage-free eggs by 2017, and only purchase pork from suppliers that can demonstrate documented plans to end their use of gestation crates for breeding pigs. Burger King says it has been increasing the amount of cage-free eggs and gestation crate-free pork in its supply chain since 2007, and was the first major fast food restaurant chain to move towards cage-free eggs. Currently nine percent of the company's eggs and 20 percent of its pork come from cage-free sources. Whereas, regulatory factors may also play into the viability of corporation's ability to adapt. The states of Michigan and California have passed laws to outlaw cage confinement of hens, and Ohio's governor announced his support for a moratorium on the construction of any new cage layer facilities, according to the Humane Society. California also recently enacted a law that requires all whole eggs sold statewide be cage-free by 2015.