So my last post was about fast food chain Chipotle who is doing some really awesome stuff with organic and locally grown foods.Their commitment to creating a healthier agriculture and food system makes me a bit angry when I think about McDonald’s new greenwashing campaign. The guys over at Grist first turned me on to this new campaign. Check out a couple of the videos and read their article:

Grist already tackled the potatoes video, so I figured I’d give my opinion on their beef supplier. Let me start by saying that these commercials are very well done. Not quite as good as the Chipotle video I love, but still very well done. They make it seem like all their beef comes from this nice family run farm where the grandfather teaches his grandsons the family business and your cows roam free and are as happy as can be well until they go into your burger at least. I do believe that this farm supplies McDonalds, but I highly doubt all of their beef suppliers are similar to this. As Grist points out most of the carbon content of fast-food beef comes from corn (check out this Scientific American article). So I suppose documentaries like King Corn and Food Inc. might not be unfair attacks on the fast-food industry.

My problem with this is that McDonalds is basically insulting everything Chipotle is doing by pretending to care about more than the bottom line. Although, it seems like customers aren’t tricked into loving McDonalds after their recent Twitter backlash where the company was abused after trying to create a positive trending topic. Perhaps they got what they deserved, we’re not stupid.