: Surf and Turf: How Seaweed Helps Cows Become Better Climate Citizens #WorldNEWS Getting calories out of grass is not easy. That’s why cows and other ruminants, like goats and sheep, have multiple

Surf and Turf: How Seaweed Helps Cows Become Better Climate Citizens #WorldNEWS
Getting calories out of grass is not easy. That’s why cows and other ruminants, like goats and sheep, have multiple compartments in their stomachs to help them digest their food. One of those stomachs is populated by microbes that help break down plant matter into a more digestible form. The process, called enteric fermentation, also produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas that is 80 times more efficient at heating the atmosphere than carbon dioxide over the first 20 years it is in the atmosphere, before it breaks down into other compounds. A single cow releases around 250-500 liters of methane a day. There are approximately 1 billion cows used in the global meat and dairy industries, and, combined with other animals raised for livestock, are responsible for releasing the methane equivalent of some 3. 1 gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. If cows were a country, they would be the world’s third-largest greenhouse-gas emitter, behind China and the U. S. , and ahead of India.
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At the COP26 climate conference held in Glasgow last week, more than 105 nations pledged to reduce methane emissions by 30% by 2030. Most countries pledges focused on tamping down on their oil, gas and coal industries, which are responsible for a third of human-caused methane emissions—only a few plans focused on tackling agricultural sources of methane, which contribute 42% of the global total of the greenhouse gas.
Read more: A Methane Pledge Is the First Good News Out of COP26. Nothing Else Will Be as Easy
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations premier climate body, recommends that humans consume less meat and dairy as a way to reduce global warming. But getting humans to change their eating patterns is difficult. Tackling the issue at its source—in this case, the cows themselves, could be far easier.
Scientists have developed multiple approaches for capturing bovine emissions, from masks fitted for cow noses that restrict the amount of methane the animals burps release into the atmosphere to ingenious, but misguided, plastic backpacks designed to trap cow farts. (For what its worth, most of the methane produced by cows is released through belching, only 5% comes out of the other end). Farmers are selectively breeding lower-emitting cows, and some veterinary scientists are working on a vaccine that targets the methane-emitting bacteria in cow guts while leaving more beneficial (and less polluting) microbes alone.
The best solutions, however, start at the source, with feed additives. In September Brazil and Chile approved the use of Bovaer, a synthetic feed supplement developed by Dutch bioscience company DSM that reduces methane emissions in dairy cows by 30%, and up to 80% in beef cattle.