Food
Beef

The beef with sustainable beef ... McDonald’s and other fast-food chains will soon be offering burgers made with ‘sustainable beef’. But are they really better for the environment – and who’s verifying the claims?

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

The beef with sustainable beef ... McDonald’s and other fast-food chains will soon be offering burgers made with ‘sustainable beef’. But are they really better for the environment – and who’s verifying the claims?

Why McDonald’s should focus on selling less beef – and raising its wages

How sustainable will the beef in Mcdonalds burgers really be? Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/the Guardian

In the near future, you might not feel as guilty about ordering a Big Mac. McDonald’s claims that by 2016, its iconic burger – along with all its other beef products – will be made with “verified sustainable beef”.

While beef is beloved by Americans – who ate 25bn lbs in 2013 – it’s also one of the most environmentally damaging food in today’s diet. So the fast-food giant’s move to make beef more palatable for the environmentally conscious should be a welcome move. Except it’s unclear what exactly is so sustainable – or indeed verifiable – about the beef of the future.

The beef industry is only at the beginning of a long journey to figure out how it can green its burgers, but it recently had a breakthrough. In late 2014, the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (GRSB) – a consortium of beef industry stakeholders including retail and processing giants like McDonald’s and Cargill, rancher associations and a handful of environmental nonprofits – published a set of principles and criteria defining sustainable beef production.

Not everyone, however, applauded the work. Two weeks after it was published, 23 NGOs responded with a co-signed letter condemning the effort as a “fundamentally flawed” attempt at greenwashing.

It’s widely agreed that beef has a sustainability problem. According to the latest assessment from the UN, livestock production accounts for 14.5% of greenhouse gas emissions.

Sustainability experts were excited to see beef industry heavyweights make the issue a priority, says Andrew Gunther, program director at Animal Welfare Approved, an organization which certifies humane and environmentally sound meat and dairy producers. Considering the degree of competing interests between national producers and different industry sectors, he adds, “getting [stakeholders] in a room to start talking about sustainability and to start working together is a phenomenal step forward”.

The document is so broad as to be meaningless.

Andrew Gunther, Animal Welfare Approved

That’s why what the group came up with is disappointing, said Gunther, a signer of the NGOs’ letter. The document is so broad as to be meaningless, the NGOs say, and fails to address basic issues such as the overuse of antibiotics, widespread practice of feedlot agriculture and the rights of workers. “They missed the opportunity to develop some really strong baseline statements that are verifiable,” he says.

According to the GRSB, however, the principles and criteria document had to remain broad to obtain buy-in from such a diverse group. “I would urge on the part of our critics that they recognize the challenge of bringing these disparate parties together and that they show some patience,” says Ruaraidh Petre, the group’s executive director.

Now that this foundation is laid, over the next year, regional and national roundtables will develop more precise standards and indicators at the local level, he says. The GRSB will act as a sort of coordinating body, helping to define things like equivalency for metrics developed by different groups.

What’s more, the document is not as vague as critics contend, Petre says. For example, the section outlining human rights and worker protections references a United Nations framework that makes specific commitments, and getting all roundtable members to agree to it was no easy feat.

After the November GRSB motion, McDonald’s, its supply partner Cargill, the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association and the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef launched a pilot study to determine how to figure out how to measure, verify, and communicate the sustainability of beef production and to develop a baseline of practices that are recognized as sustainable. “The long term goal is to drive continuous improvement that enhances and maintains the social license to operate and sell more beef,” said Michele Banik-Rake, the fast food retail giant’s director of worldwide supply chain sustainability.

The GRSB also rejects the notion that the extensive antibiotic use and feedlots are inherently unsustainable. “Feedlot agriculture accounts for a huge proportion of beef in the United States,” Petre says. “For us to say that it could never be sustainable – or could never be more sustainable – would be to admit failure, and that is a very negative way of looking at the world.” Instead, he and other members say, the goal is to look for ways to improve any given operation.

Judith Capper, an independent livestock sustainability consultant and an observing member of the GRSB, argues that any and all systems used within the industry could fit the definition of sustainability – as long as they are working well.

Feedlots significantly reduce land and water resources required for raising beef, Capper points out. That’s because entirely grass-fed animals grow slower than corn- and soy-fed ones. Producing the current amount of beef with purely grass-fed operations would take an extra 131m acres of land per year and 468bn gallons of water, and it would increase the carbon footprint by the equivalent of adding 26.6m cars to the road, she said.

Nicolete Hahn Niman, an environmental lawyer, rancher and author of Defending Beef: The Case for Sustainable Meat Production, says it’s not surprising that the GRSB document reads like the group thinks nothing much needs to change. “It’s a set of recommendations by an industry that is very heavily invested in the current system and doesn’t have much incentive to radically alter what they are doing,” she says.

She categorically disagrees with the notion that feedlots plus antibiotics can equal sustainability. “To say that it gets the animal to market faster and therefore enhances sustainability is really looking at it in a myopic way,” she says.

Animals living in close confinement have a much bigger problem with diseases such as pneumonia and bronchial infections, and high-protein corn and soy diets can cause liver lesions, all of which jacks up the need for antibiotics.

“One of the most fundamental principles of sustainable agriculture is healthfulness,” Hahn Niman says. “Antibiotic feeding is really a crutch to enable a form of livestock production that wouldn’t be able to function without these drugs.”

And that’s to say nothing of the evidence that agricultural use of antibiotics fuels the rise of antibiotic resistance, which poses health risks not just for humans but for animals.

The industry alone isn’t to blame for current industry practices, Gunther notes. “We are not, as consumers, innocent here,” he says. “They’ve been producing this way because consumers have demanded this so-called cheap food.”

Hahn Niman agrees that it’s consumer demand, not self-regulation by industry-heavy groups like the GRSB, that is likely to move the needle towards sustainable beef production.

While the industry contribution won’t be radical, she says, every little bit helps. “If they want to look at water usage, transport emissions, ecological footprint and whatever else – great, I’m delighted,” she says.

The food hub is funded by The Irish Food Board. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled “brought to you by” Find out more here. http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/mcd/sustainability/signature_programs/beef-sustainability.html You have to be kidding