If you’ve had a conversation over the past couple of years with someone regarding greenhouse gases, climate change, or global warming, there’s a good chance that you’ve heard about how much methane is produced by our bovine populations. When you have multiple stomaches and eat as much as cows do you’re going to be “gassy.” That gas produces a lot of methane—truly.
Actually, despite a lot of jokes about farting cows, the bulk of methane emissions— about 90 percent—come from their slightly less impolite burps. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), global livestock collectively burp and poot about seven gigatonnes (that’s seven billion metric tons) of CO2-equivalents each year. About 14.5 percent of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions come from livestock. That is more than global car and airplane traffic emissions combined.
While sheep, goats, and buffalo (and giraffes and camels) all generate methane, 65 percent comes from cows. In a recent study, Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Department of Global Ecology pointed out that eating a pound of beef causes more greenhouse warming than burning a gallon of gasoline. Multiply that by the one billion pounds of beef Americans consume each year just at McDonald’s and it begins to add up fast.
According to the Irish Times, since 2012, there has been anecdotal evidence that suggests that cows who eat a little bit of seaweed are both healthier and less prone to producing so much gas. And now there is more than just the a few examples told by farmers.
Researchers at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia, found the addition of less than 2 per cent dried seaweed to a cow’s diet could reduce their methane emissions by as much as 99 per cent.
The study builds on the experience of a Canadian farmer who discovered in 2012 that cattle eating wind-blown seaweed were not just more healthy than others, but enjoyed a longer mating cycle. Researchers Rob Kinley and Alan Fredeen subsequently confirmed the results as well as finding seaweeds and similar plants reduced methane emissions.
This was further substantiated by the Australian study, which was led by Prof of Aquaculture Rocky De Nys in collaboration with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.
The Australian study was reported on last year by National Geographic, where the results were pretty impressive.
The crucial research, by Robert Kinley of CSIRO and Rocky De Nys, professor of aquaculture at Australia’s James Cook University, and colleagues, involved testing some 20 different species of seaweed in artificial cow stomachs—that is, a mix of rumen and microbes that mimics the behavior of a cow stomach in a bottle. When grass or feed is added to this in vitro tummy, fermentation takes place and the scientists are able to measure the resulting methane output. In the presence of Asparagopsis taxiformis—described by De Nys as “a real stand-out” among the tested seaweeds— methane production was cut by 99 percent. Experiments in sheep showed that if dried Asparagopsis taxiformis seaweed made up just 2 percent of total feed, methane emissions drop by 70 percent. It can be added as a sprinkle, De Nys says, just as you might add a smattering of herbs to roast chicken.
Ireland has a history of harvesting seaweed and so trying to figure out a way to make this work will most likely be a case of connecting very few dots, but since most of the world’s countries have seaweed at at least one border, this isn’t impossible. Making these kinds of changes are essential going forward, and even more pressing as we face a ruling political party that seems hellbent on setting our planet on fire.