McDonald’s has changed its French fries recipe in Germany due to a sunflower oil shortage fuelled by the war in Ukraine.

German media are reporting that supermarkets in the country are largely sold out of sunflower oil due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, which usually produces nearly 50 percent of all the sunflower oil made in the world and usually accounts for over 50 percent of global sunflower oil exports.

But the Russian invasion, which began on Thursday, 24th February, has had a negative effect on the supply chain and has disrupted Ukrainian agriculture.

This has forced McDonald’s in Germany to change their cooking oil recipe for French fries.

A spokesman for the Association of Oilseed Processing Industries (OVID), in the German capital Berlin, said that “Ukraine is the world’s most important supplier of sunflower oil.

“More than half of the global exports of sunflower oil come from the Eastern European country. In Ukraine, so-called crude oil has so far been produced from sunflower seeds and shipped across the Black Sea, but exports have come to a standstill because of the war.”

A spokeswoman for McDonald’s Germany said: “We use a vegetable oil mixture to fry our fries – including sunflower and rapeseed oil – with sunflower oil only making up a small part.”

She added: “Due to the currently limited availability, we will temporarily further reduce this lower proportion of sunflower oil.”

But she added that this would not affect the “usual quality” of McDonald’s fries.

German media have reported that Germany, France and Poland all grow large quantities of rapeseed oil, which can be used as a substitute for sunflower oil.

But Thomas Geppert, the state manager of the hotel and restaurant association Dehoga, in Munich, said: “In any case, we can see that the prices for cooking oils have risen drastically.”