Evaluate McDonald’s international strategy.

As the McDonald’s Corporation entered the 21st century, its corporate practices had become more vulnerable than ever before. A large variety of public interest groups made McDonald’s the target of their attacks. McDonald’s critics contended that the world’s largest fast-food company paid its employees low wages, hired part-time workers— often teenagers—to avoid paying overtime premiums, and enforced an aggressive antiunion policy throughout its fast-food empire. More damaging to McDonald’s reputation were charges made by consumer advocates, health officials, and educators that McDonald’s exploited children, cultivating in them a taste for fat at an early age and thereby contributing to child obesity. Similarly, public interest groups accused McDonald’s of selling unhealthy, fatty foods to grownups, hence being responsible, at least in part, for the increasing rates of adult obesity. Among McDonald’s critics, perhaps the most influential was Eric Schlosser, author of the 2001 Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All- American Meal, a longstanding best-seller read by millions worldwide and turned into a major motion picture. In 1999, at the meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO), anti-globalization protesters attacked McDonald’s outlets in Seattle. In 2002, French protesters lead by Jose Bove, a sheep farmer, demolished a McDonald’s restaurant under construction in France, and subsequently, Bove gained worldwide fame and, a jail sentence. Between 1997 and 2000, several fast-food outlets around the world were damaged by bombs, among them McDonald’s restaurants in St. Petersburg; Athens; Rio de Janeiro; Antwerp; London; and Cali, Columbia.