Burger King is using beef from cows that burp and fart less. Here’s why that matters
Burger King announced Tuesday that it has made a shift in its operations to ensure its cows fart and burp less to fight climate change.
The company — the second-largest fast-food hamburger chain in the world — said it added 100 grams of lemongrass leaves to its cows’ prescribed diet during the animals’ last four months of life to help them release less of the greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere, according to a news release.
The new diet is said to reduce up to 33% of methane emissions per day, on average, in the months before they are turned into the company’s famous Whopper burger.
“This is an open source approach to a real problem,” Fernando Machado, global chief marketing officer of Restaurant Brands International, said in the release. “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.”
Scientists from Mexico and California helped Burger King develop the new diet, according to the release, with the goal of addressing the environmental impact of beef.
The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization says livestock is responsible for approximately 14.5% of all global greenhouse gas emissions, with about 44% of them in the form of methane.
Methane is a colorless and odorless gas that traps the sun’s heat and warms the planet much more efficiently than carbon dioxide, despite floating in the air for shorter periods of time, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Experts say methane has a heating impact 25 times greater than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period, the agency said.
According to NASA, cows release more of the gas when they burp rather than when they fart. A methane-filled belch is the product of the conversion of sugars into simpler molecules for absorption into the bloodstream.
A smaller percentage comes from the cow’s large intestine when released via fart, NASA said.
The “reduced methane emissions beef Whopper sandwich” is available in select locations in Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Austin, Texas, and Portland, Oregon, as of July 14.
This story was originally published July 15, 2020 at 11:29 AM with the headline "Burger King is using beef from cows that burp and fart less. Here’s why that matters."
