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Burger King shares greenhouse gas-reduction plan for beef cow feed

Photo: iStock

July 14, 2020

Burger King made a move today that it said it hopes will prompt others in the fast food industry to join it in fighting environmentally harmful global greenhouse gas emissions by working to change the feed for the cows that ultimately become its hamburgers.

According to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization, livestock – including beef cattle — is responsible for approximately 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Cows release methane, a greenhouse gas that traps the sun's heat and warms the planet, as a by-product of their digestion.

To help tackle this environmental issue, Burger King worked with scientists to create and test a new diet for cows, which according to initial study results, reduces cow's methane emissions up to 33% per day, on average, during the last three to four months of cows' lives.

Burger King said in a news release that the formula for the diet is both open source and fairly simple to implement. Preliminary tests suggest that adding 100 grams of lemongrass leaves to the cows' daily veterinary prescribed diet during the four months before they are slaughtered to create beef helps them release less methane as they digest their food, Burger King said.

"We believe that delicious, affordable and convenient meals can also be sustainable," Fernando Machado, global CMO of Burger King parent company, Restaurant Brands International, said in the release. "We are making all our findings public. This an open source approach to a real problem. If the whole industry, from farmers, meat suppliers, and other brands join us, we can increase scale and collectively help reduce methane emissions that affect climate change."

To test and develop the formula, the brand collaborated with scientists including Autonomous University at the State of Mexico Professor Octavio Castelan and University of California, Davis Professor Ermias Kebreab.

Today, a single Burger King location in each of these cities will offer the reduced methane emissions beef Whopper: Miami, New York and Los Angeles, as well as Austin, Texas and Portland, Oregon The brand is also releasing a video to inform consumers about the problem and solution.

Burger King now has more than 18,800 locations worldwide, but the brand did not say if or when the low-methane emission beef would be made available elsewhere.