McDonald’s USA, one of the largest fast food restaurant chains, Lopez Foods, a multi-protein producer and long-term supplier to McDonald’s, and Syngenta North America, a leader in agricultural technology, today announced a collaboration that aims to increase feed efficiency and help reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions released per pound of meat produced, as part of efforts to improve the sustainability of beef production.

Enogen® corn is an in-seed innovation available exclusively from Syngenta, that has been shown to increase feed efficiency in cattle and thereby help reduce emissions intensity compared to other corn.

Syngenta, McDonald’s and Lopez Foods announce collaboration aimed at helping to reduce certain environmental impacts during beef production.

University research has shown that feeding Enogen® as silage or grain can improve feed efficiency by about 5%². Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) shows potential for environmental savings resulting from this increased efficiency, including lower emissions of greenhouse gases and lower use of land, energy, and water per unit of production³. Specific findings show that, per 1,000 head of beef cattle, this collaboration could potentially achieve annual savings of⁴:

• 196 tons (178 metric tons) CO2e in GHG reduction
• 69 acre reduction (28 hectare) in land use for growing feed
• 6 million fewer gallons (22 million liters) of water used
• 231 thousand kilowatt-hours energy savings

McDonald’s plans to scale this program to help deliver over 164,000 metric tons CO2e per year.

Source: https://www.syngenta.com/media/media-releases/2024/mcdonalds-usa-syngenta-and-lopez-foods-collaborate-help-produce-beef-more