Rep. Keith Ellison (D., Minn.) took aim at the world's largest restaurant chain in a Wednesday interview, labeling McDonald's a "bad actor" and falsely accusing it of both "clear-cutting forests so they can graze more cattle" and paying its CEO $9,000 an hour.
Ellison's interview with Truthout, part of its "Interviews for Resistance" series, grabbed headlines for the Democratic National Committee vice chairman's statement that "maximum wage" laws should be established, a policy claim his interviewer Sarah Jaffe initially thought was a joke.
"No, I didn't make a joke about maximum wage, I made a statement about maximum wage," Ellison said before taking aim at McDonald's.
"The CEO of McDonald's makes $9,000 an hour and they're fighting people getting $15 an hour," Ellison said. "These people, not only are they screwing over workers, they're screwing over the environment. They're clear-cutting forests so they can graze more cattle, and we all know that beef production is extremely abusive on the environment. They're bad actors, you know?"
There was little truth to anything Ellison said, a fact partially recognized by Truthout, which replaced Ellison's $9,000-an-hour figure with a closer to accurate $3,000-an-hour figure in the transcript it posted online. There is no mention on the page that Ellison used a different figure, even though the site chose to feature the edited quote on its page.
A Truthout "community liason" said the editorial team would "review the transcription discrepancy," but ultimately did not respond to questions on the decision to edit Ellison's quote without disclosing the change to readers.
Ellison's other evidence used to label McDonald's a "bad actor"—that it is "screwing over the environment" by "clear-cutting forests so they can graze more cattle"—also is not true.
Mighty Earth, a leading environmental nonprofit focused on deforestation, recently praised McDonald's for its "leadership" on the issue, pointing to 2015 commitments by the company to eliminate deforestation from its entire supply chain.
"McDonald's has even shown leadership by committing to eliminate deforestation from its supply chains, and urging its suppliers to do the same," wrote the group in its investigative piece into the environmental impact of the fast food industry.
The piece points to a Union of Concerned Scientists scorecard of major beef sellers on deforestation that ranked McDonald's far above any of its competitors. The group praised McDonald's for taking measures such as using satellite imagery to make sure that suppliers around the globe were complying with its standards.
It is unclear where Ellison's claim on McDonald's "clear-cutting forests" came from. His office did not respond to a request for comment on the false claims.