My Lemongrass-Fed Beef with Burger King
Thank you to Ryann Artistry for sponsoring this week’s episode. Ryann Artistry is located in Southeastern Oklahoma and owned by makeup artist Kyla Ryann McBrayer. To book Ryann for your next event or photoshoot, visit her Facebook page, Ryann Artistry.
I would also like to thank Russell Carrell, a Ph.D. from Auburn University, for allowing me to interview him.
Since 1954, Burger King (BK) has been one of the big players in the fast food game. With a name like “Burger King,” you’d expect the company to not only have a killer burger but support the industry who supplies them with burger: the beef industry. However, in recent years, it’s almost as if BK has no regard for the American rancher in the slightest.
Last week, BK released a commercial called “Cows Menu.” Versions of this commercial can be seen on any of their social media platforms, TV, and the full version can be found on YouTube — check it out below.
The Cows Menu commercial has a catchy tune sung by internet sensation Mason Ramsey. The gist of it is “cow farts and burps” produce Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, specifically methane, and Burger King conducted a study which they claim showed that by adding lemongrass as a feed additive, we could reduce methane emissions by over a third.
Now, when I saw this, I immediately went to look for the study and was surprisingly not surprised with what I found: the study Burger King is referring to has not yet been published.
Another thing I uncovered when digging for information on BK’s research is that the study was conducted in the U.S. (by U.C. Davis) and Mexico. Where Mexico did, in fact, find a 33 percent decrease in GHG emissions, according to Associate Dean at the University of California, Davis and World Food Center Director Ermias Kebreab, Ph.D., the U.S. portion of the study did not.
Let me be clear: I do not want to discredit anyone’s hard work – just because something is not peer reviewed and unpublished does not mean the study is false, it just means that the study is invalid for the time being. Maybe after review, the study will go on to be published as is and if so, it’s a reliable source. But for now, the study is not.
From a marketing standpoint, I think this entire campaign is a bust. I would think a major company like BK would’ve waited to release this information until after the work had been published. I would think BK would wait until the study had been replicated with even close to similar results. I would think BK would try to work with and fight for the people who provide them with the food they use to keep the doors open.
However, Burger King did not wait, they did not provide valid information, and they did not stand up for the people who (quite literally) keep their doors open. Now, here we agriculturists are, attempting to defend our industry to an abundance of beef-eating Americans against a major company who has yet to retract any of the misinformation after their chief marketing officer claimed they would (see my front page story this week for more details on THAT).
But don’t take my ranty words for it, take it from an expert: Russell Carrell.
Carrell is a fellow Aggie and holds the following degrees: Bachelor of Science in Animal Science from Texas A&M; Master of Science in Animal Science from Tarleton State University; completed the TCU Ranch Management Program; and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Ruminant Nutrition/Forage Production from Auburn University. The guy knows his cattle.
“This commercial was just another great example of manipulating and cherry-picking data — and putting a spin on it to take advantage of an uninformed consumer,” Carrell said.
Carrell said whenever he initially saw the commercial, he thought it was hard to watch and BK “just kind of got it all wrong.”
“They are still putting beef on people’s plates when they could be choosing other protein sources, which is good” Carrell said. “I think in that regard, you have to just take everything with a grain of salt. I just really wish they would’ve done a better job when looking at the science.”
Carrell pointed out that when you visit Burger King’s website and view the research on this study put out by their parent company, you only see one scientific reference for the whole study, “and that’s just not how science works,” he added.
On the bright side, Carrell said, BK did get one thing right: methane is produced by cattle. To cite the Environmental Protection Agency, cattle are responsible for about 2 percent of GHG emissions in the United States. I would also like to add that the U.S. has consistently reduced methane emissions from 1990-2018.
“Cattle do have an influence on our global methane production. I think that cattle are easy to point a finger at and lay blame to as far as the carbon footprint and the effects that humanity is having on our environment and the atmosphere — they’re an easy front to lay blame at because cows can’t talk back,” Carrell said. “They can’t tell their story, so it’s up to us as scientists and cattle producers alike, and just anyone who enjoys beef… it’s our responsibility to just know what’s really going on and to be able to communicate that.”
Switching gears to what BK got wrong, Carrell said one of the things that frustrates him the most in this argument is the claim that “cow farts are ruining the world.”
“I’m not going to sit here and tell you that there’s zero methane coming out of the back end of a cow,” Carrell stated. “But the majority of that methane is produced via fermentation in that rumen [a rumen is the first stomach of a ruminant, which receives food or cud from the esophagus, partly digests it with the aid of bacteria, and passes it to the reticulum]. In the literature and in popular press, the term used a lot is eructation.”
Eructation, Carrell said, is naturally thought of as a belch. He added that cattle do belch, and when they belch, they release methane. However, a large majority of methane released is a byproduct of volatile fatty acids in the rumen. The methane produced from this is pushed into the cow’s esophagus, then into their lungs for the cow to inhale, then released when the cow exhales.
“One of the things our anti-ag and anti-corporate ag firms kind of get wrong and I have a conflicting message with is the message to stop factory farming and we need to have all grass-fed beef to take care of the environment,” Carrell added. “Those are all great soapboxes to stand on and things to make you feel good, but there’s some conflicting messages with that because if we have beef cattle that are on open range, on a forage based diet, and on grass their entire life — we’re actually increasing the carbon footprint of those cattle.”
He said when feeding cattle grain in a feedlot for that last portion of their life (called “finishing”), the industry produces much less methane because the rate of some of those volatile fatty acids is much smaller which creates a reduction in methane.
“The thing that everyone kind of stuck to from that commercial is the feeding of lemongrass, and I had to do a lot of reading on lemongrass in the past couple of days [to understand it better],” Carrell said. “But there’s a lot of studies out there. In the early 2000’s, they were doing a lot of research on lemongrass. There’s a few studies that found we are able to reduce methane by feeding lemongrass in a finishing diet.”
But, these studies were not looking at actual lemongrass being fed to cattle — they were studying oil extracted from lemongrass mixed in with a grain diet. Which is great, right? Except there’s a catch: Carrell said there are already products used in feedlot rations that do the exact same thing and increase feed efficiency by getting cattle in and out of the feedlot quicker since the 1970’s (products such as Rumensin and BOVATEC). These products and this quick process ultimately results in a reduced carbon footprint.
To wrap it up, Carrell said his overall feelings towards Burger King after the airing of their Cows Menu commercial can be summed up in one word: disappointed.
“This has been Burger King biting the hand that feeds them, to me,” Carrell stated. “You know, they rely on beef and sell a lot of beef, and I think that going against your producers and painting a bad picture of the people supplying you your product is not a good look.
“I think my big take home from it, is that they created a lot of distrust within the agricultural community and they did not help the consumers at all with that message they sent. We have consumers that just don’t know, and I feel like it’s a little bit unethical to bring forth things [information] that we can’t really confirm yet. Overall, it’s a muddy message that creates distrust from producers.”
