McDonald’s USA announced a new effort to reduce the climate impact of its hamburgers through a collaboration with meat supplier Lopez Foods and agrichemical giant Syngenta.
McDonald’s and Lopez Foods will scale use of Syngenta’s Enogen corn as animal feed, according to a news release. The partnership is expected to help deliver more than 164,000 metric tons of emissions savings per year, while improving land use, water and energy consumption. Ranchers that work with Lopez will receive incentives for adding the corn to their feed rations as directed.
McDonald’s is the first large food company to partner with Syngenta on the chemical giant’s Feed Forward Program, which looks to address climate change by scaling feed innovations throughout company value-chains. In addition to McDonald’s, talks are also in the works with other potential clients surrounding Enogen, a Syngenta spokesperson said in an email to Agriculture Dive.
Enogen corn, which can be used for both grain and silage, has a robust alpha amylase enzyme that quickly converts starch to usable sugars, according to a release, providing more readily available energy to dairy and beef cattle. University research has shown Enogen can improve feed efficiency in cattle by about 5%, which could yield significant environmental savings at scale.
“To your average person, small percentages like 5 percent might not seem significant when 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 millions of cattle starts with understanding where the impacts occur in the life cycle of the product.”
If 1,000 beef cattle were to ingest 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 dozens of acres of land to grow other crops on an annual basis, while also reducing the amount of water and energy needed.
Under the collaboration, participants will receive a per-head, per-day incentive for feeding the corn at the rate and timing required to result in climate benefits, Syngenta’s spokesperson said. This includes using Enogen as 50% or more of the starch content in the feed rations, from feed yard entrance to exit, for a set number of days.
Enrollment for the McDonald’s collaboration begins this fall, with plans to harvest Enogen silage or grain next year, and then subsequently feed it to cattle in 2026, Syngenta’s spokesperson said. Payouts are slated to happen in 2027.