McDonald’s and Syngenta join forces to create a more sustainable hamburger

On By Littum

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McDonald’s USA announced a new effort to reduce the climate burden of its hamburgers through a collaboration with meat supplier Lopez Foods and agricultural chemical giant Syngenta.

McDonald’s and Lopez Foods will scale up the use of Syngenta’s Enogen corn as animal feed, according to a press release. The partnership is expected to help deliver more than 164,000 tonnes of emissions savings per year, while improving land use, water and energy consumption. Farmers working with Lopez will receive incentives to add corn to their feed rations as directed.

McDonald’s is the first major food company to partner with Syngenta on the chemical giant’s Feed Forward Program, which looks to address climate change by scaling feed innovations across the company’s value chains. In addition to McDonald’s, negotiations are also underway with other potential customers around Enogen, a Syngenta spokesperson said in an email to Agriculture Dive.

Enogenic corn, which can be used for both grain and silage, has a robust alpha-amylase enzyme that quickly converts starch to usable sugars, providing more readily available energy for dairy and beef cattle, according to a release. University research has shown that Enogen can improve cattle feed efficiency by about 5%which can provide significant environmental savings on a large scale.

“To your average person, small percentages like 5 percent may not seem significant when you’re feeding cattle,” Marty Matlock, executive director of the University of Arkansas Resiliency Center, which conducted the assessment, said in 2021. “But improving sustainability indicators across a complex system like beef production with tens of thousands of head of cattle starts with understanding where impacts occur in the product’s life cycle.”

If 1,000 beef cattle were to consume Enogen through the McDonald’s collaboration, it could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 196 tons per year, according to a release. It could also open up tens of hectares of land to grow other crops on an annual basis, while reducing the amount of water and energy needed.

During the collaboration, the participants will receive an incentive per inhabitant per day to feed corn at the rate and timing required to result in climate benefits, the Syngenta spokesman said. This includes using Enogen as 50% or more of the starch content of the feed rations, from feedlot entry to exit, for a specified number of days.

Signing up for the McDonald’s collaboration will begin this fall, with plans to harvest Enogen silage or grain next year and then feed it to cattle in 2026, the Syngenta spokesman said. Payments are expected to take place in 2027.