McDonalds Working Towards Buying Sustainable Beef ,Velveeta Shortage and Cheerios

McDonald's is committed to purchasing verified sustainable beef during 2016 - after a two-year ramp up in which the corporation will listen, learn and collaborate with stakeholders from farm to the front counter to develop sustainable beef solutions. Changing up its beef supply is a big undertaking for the chain that sells about a billion pounds of beef each year in the U.S. McDonald's has been working with the World Wildlife Fund, Cargill, JBS and others since 2011 to create a Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef.

Kraft is warning that supplies of Velveeta on store shelves may run low in the coming weeks because of seasonal demand that aligns with the NFL playoff season. On Twitter some have called the shortage a cheesepocalypse.

Last week - General Mills announced that their number one selling cereal brand - Cheerios - will now be made with non-GMO corn starch and sugar. Some consumers will consider this a big change to a household staple - and anti-GMO groups are calling this move a vindication for the concerns about GMO crops. But according to Cornell University Professor of Plant Breeding and Genetics Dr. Margaret Smith - the new cheerios will be no different than the old yellow-boxed product

Smith: "Corn starch is starch. Thing that is novel in a genetically engineered corn is a piece of DNA that was derived from some other organism and that DNA produces a protein that a non-genetically engineered corn would not produce. Corn starch does not have protein and it doesn't have DNA in it. It is purified starch. So the starch is going to be chemically identical, regardless of which variety it comes from because it doesn't have the protein and it doesn't have the DNA. So that is why I sort of said that Cheerios are going to be nutritionally -- and if you were going to do a chemically analysis of them -- they would look no different from the Cheerios that were already out there."

Smith says the new GMO-free Cheerios doesn't give consumers a different option at the grocery store - as it is no different, no safer and no more nutritious than the previous product - but it does give people an option to speak with their dollars.

Smith: "The only thing I can see is that it does is to give people an option not to support companies or greater use of varieties that are genetically engineered. So if you don't like the technology -- for whatever reason -- it gives you the choice to invest your money in a product that doesn't support the use of that technology."