Sun, Jul 19, 2020 page16

• Burger King’s climate solution is a limited-supply Whopper

  A diet of lemongrass is expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cattle used in the burger, but the restaurant does not disclose its target for cutting emissions, making the effect of the move hard to gauge

  • By Nic Querolo and Agnieszka de Sousa / Bloomberg
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  Burger King plans to begin selling Whoppers sourced from cows that belch out less methane as the fast-food industry grapples with a questionable sustainability record.

  The chain, owned by Restaurant Brands International Inc, on Tuesday debuted a burger made from cattle raised on a diet supplemented with lemongrass during the final months of their lives, the company said.

  That is expected to cut greenhouse gas emissions from those animals by about one-third while on the diet.

  

  Simmental beef cattle feed on hay in a pasture near Middletown, Illinois, on Sept. 12, 2011. To reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Burger King has released a burger made from cattle raised on a diet supplemented with lemongrass during the final months of their lives.

  Photo: AP

  The new menu offering comes as a growing number of major food brands reckon with their large role in contributing to global emissions. Meat producers and retailers have been under growing pressure from investors and consumers to cut the impact of their products on the climate.

  “To make a real impact in the world, we need the whole industry to change,” said Fernando Machado, Burger King’s global chief marketing officer. “Just offering at Burger King is kind of like a drop in the ocean.”

  Agriculture-related industries are second only to energy in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, and raising animals accounts for about 14.5 percent of the global total. Cows emit methane that is about 30 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at warming the planet.

  

  An employee hands over an order at a Burger King in Ballyrobert, Northern Ireland, on April 16.

  Photo: Reuters

  The logistics of selling low-methane beef at scale across a fast-food empire are daunting. Meat suppliers and retailers would need to be ready to pay up more for that sort of beef. Any feed supplements or modified diets are likely to carry extra costs for cattle farmers who are already grappling with squeezed incomes, a problem compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic.

  Machado did not say how much the lower-methane beef would cost Burger King, which does not plan to charge more for the limited-time product.

  The burger would be on menus at selected stores in Miami, New York, Austin, Portland and Los Angeles while stocks last, the company said.

  It is also partnering with suppliers in Latin America and Europe to expand on the effort.

  This is not the first green initiative taken by the company, which sells meatless burgers under a partnership with Impossible Foods Inc. Still, the restaurant does not disclose its target for cutting emissions, making the effect of this latest step difficult to gauge.

  Green product releases can help companies dodge calls for transparency, while giving them a sales and public-relations boost.

  While initial experiments have shown that Burger King’s modified diet cuts methane emissions by an average of 33 percent per day during the last three to four months of the cows’ lives, the method is still pending validation from an academic peer review after initial experiments. If sold on a mass scale, lower-emission beef might require the right certification to win consumer trust.

  The company said that it would openly share its cow diet formula to convince others to follow suit.

  “Next, I hope to see Burger King and others research how to reduce methane emissions — and emissions from manure and fertilizer — during all phases of beef production, not just the last three to four months,” Dan Blaustein-Rejto, director of food and agriculture at the Oakland, California-based environmental research organization Breakthrough Institute, wrote on Twitter.

  Meat-sourcing companies are far behind on globally accepted corporate sustainability initiatives. Most of these companies have not yet disclosed the emissions the company and its products produce, according to FAIRR, an initiative set up by environmentally minded investors.

  Disclosures are key to assessing whether any of the company’s green initiatives lead to promised emissions cuts or not.

  Researchers and companies have explored a range of feed supplements, vaccines and diets that would help cut methane emitted by ruminants’ stomachs, but it has so far been tricky because microbes responsible for creating methane have shown resistance to some methods, while other solutions might be hard to scale up.

  One UK-based start-up is even working on methane-eating masks for cows.

  Even if successful, modifying diets only partly cuts emissions, raising the need for other methods. Some companies have pushed into a type of farming known as regenerative agriculture, which aims to cull carbon’s release into the air through biodiversity and soil health.

  General Mills Inc aims to convert 404,685 hectares of land into regenerative farming by 2030.
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