Feeding cows seaweed cuts 99% of greenhouse gas emissions from their burps

[HillaryBriss]

An earlier HN post about the same topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17036221

[avar]

This is a perfect example of why "sin taxes" like the proposed tax on meat[1][2] to fight climate change are a bad idea.

You need to tax the externality (greenhouse gas emissions), not an activity which currently causes such emissions, because then you don't have any incentives left (such as in this case) for industries to reduce those emissions.

1. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/11/meat-tax...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat_tax

[Joe-Z]

Of course the remaining sin being treating animals like a commodity, making them suffer, driving them around in crowded conditions for hundreds of miles...

It‘s not just the environment that suffers from our industrialized way to produce meat

[sparrc]

That gets a bit more complicated though, greenhouse gas emissions through burping is just one of the many impacts cattle have on the planet: land usage, water usage, manure (harms water supplies, runoff, release gasses, etc), and then you have the knock-on impacts of all the feed that needs to be produced to feed them.

[resters]

Great point about taxing the externalities. Also, I think that elected officials with the livestock facilities in their jurisdictions should be required to live (or spend a significant amount of time) downwind of the facilities.

[jakobegger]

Some externalities are hard to tax. For example, consumption of red meat probably increases cancer risk [1]. We can't introduce a tax on cancer, but we still want to reduce the occurrence of cancer, so all that's left is taxing red meat.

[1]: http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/

[dpflan]

Nice, so we should just farm manatees? :)

Joking aside, for the more curious, the article mentions work by Australian scientists exploring the idea in 2015: The red macroalgae Asparagopsis taxiformis is a potent natural antimethanogenic that reduces methane production during in vitro fermentation with rumen fluid

> http://www.publish.csiro.au/an/AN15576

[darawk]

I've been seeing this same story for what feels like a decade now. Anyone know why this hasn't been implemented yet?

[asdff]

>Anyone know why this hasn't been implemented yet?

The same story for anything. The market pressure to precipitate this change isn't there yet.

[hsnewman]

So the clarification is "from their burps". What does it do to the greenhouse gas emissions from their farts?

[scythe]

The majority of methane produced by ruminants exits via the mouth. This is because methane is produced by bacteria -- animal cells cannot perform methanogenesis. The big difference between ruminants and humans digestively is:

- in ruminants, bacteria-assisted "fiber digestion" happens before protease-mediated "protein digestion": the rumen precedes the abomasum. (The other two stomachs, the reticulum and omasum, have an unclear function, but appear to essentially be large filters.)

- in other mammals, including most herbivores, bacteria-assisted "fiber digestion" occurs after protease-mediated "protein digestion": the stomach precedes the colon.

So while a human or other primate -- including leaf-eating monkeys -- expels most fermented gas via the anus, a ruminant will expel most of it from its mouth (eructation):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumen#Stratification_and_mixin...

[gameswithgo]

or getting the seaweed there, or growing enough seaweed

[graeme]

What happens to the molecules that would have become methane: what do they become instead?

[smhost]

> Enteric CH4 is a consequence of anaerobic fermentation of feed organic matter (OM) by a microbial consortium that produces substrate CO2 and hydrogen in a reduction pathway used by methanogens (Morgavi et al. 2010). Feed additives have been used to interfere with this pathway or otherwise reduce the numbers of functional methanogens.

(https://doi.org/10.1071/AN15576)

i guess that means they stay as co2 and hydrogen, but the paper also says that fermentation efficiency is decreased which ends up making the cows eat fewer molecules.

[gniv]

Methane is just CH4. I suspect it's not produced anymore on the partial-seaweed diet.

[beachy]

Really interesting, and potentially highly relevant to New Zealand where our many cows and sheep make up about a third of our emissions. Since cows produce quite variable emissions it sounds quite credible that some out of the box thinking like feeding seaweed could actually work in cutting emissions.

> (https://www.landcareresearch.co.nz/science/greenhouse-gases/...): Measurements of methane emission rates on sheep and dairy cows have repeatedly shown that the variability of emissions between individual animals is large (e.g. for young sheep grazing the same pasture, emission rates varied from 9 to 35 g/day per sheep). While this variability may one day be exploited to reduce methane release by selecting for low-emitting animals, it is not well understood.

[LoSboccacc]

this news has made the run once a year since I was in high school

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257589662_Methane_p...

so there's something to it that doesn't add up. either the economics of producing enough algae make it infeasible, or other factors come into play like milk/meat taste or even what to do with pastures if they aren't used for pasturing, it's not like you can grow stuff there.

[jtwebman]

Unless we start farming seaweed not sure how we can feed all the cows we eat seaweed.

[sp332]

To produce feed that the cows enjoy, the researchers cut a small amount of red seaweed with cattle feed and molasses.

You only need to add a little seaweed to the cows' regular food.

[jmvoodoo]

Seaweed farming is a thing, and has been for about 400 years.

[jbob2000]

What’s also cool is that oceans sequester carbon in seaweed the same way forests sequester it in trees. So it’s a win-win to farm seaweed!

[noetic_techy]

But does it change the taste of the meat? This is the real question and a deal breaker for many.

Grass fed meat is gamy than grain fed/finished, so I can imagine seaweed imparts an fishy taste to the fat and probably to the milk also.

[poulsbohemian]

Taste was my first thought as well, but rather than fishy, I would think if anything it might almost act as a tenderizer, adding natural sodium and umami to the meat. That does assume that the cows are eating it in a quantity where it makes any difference, but if yellow flowers can change the color of the milk, I don't know why seaweeds wouldn't do something to the taste.

[athenot]

That gives a whole new meaning to "surf and turf"... :)

All jokes aside, I wonder how they account for the extra salt that's in seaweed. I know cows usually have salt licks to supplement salt and other minerals; perhaps seaweed can supply all that's needed in terms of minerals?

[cycrutchfield]

Fishy? More like umami.

[perfunctory]

I am not sure if the word inhumane can be applied to animals but reading about innovations in meat industry usually makes me sad. I am not advocating that everybody should become a vegan, but cutting one's meat consumption by let's say 75% (eat meat every other day and cut your portions in half) shouldn't be that hard.

[gleenn]

IANA Biologist etc, but isn't the problem their gas emissions from the other end of the cow? Isn't this like some new tech eliminating all the carbon emissions from using the radio in a car, cool but not the problem?

[liamcardenas]

"...90 to 95 percent of the methane released by cows comes out of their mouths, while 5 to 10 percent is released in the form of manure and flatulence."

https://ideas.ted.com/methane-isnt-just-cow-farts-its-also-c...

[rootusrootus]

A quick search suggests that in fact the 'vast majority' of the emissions are coming out the front, not the back:

https://www.greenbiz.com/article/gassy-cows-facts-about-beef...

[radiusvector]

This just feels like propaganda from the meat industry. For every bit of scientific research touting the demerits of industrial-scale farming, the meat industry is incentivized to fight back.

[matthewmacleod]

That's great though! If the action that the "meat industry" takes is action that reduces its environmental impact, then we win!

[stephenr]

Also, we'd get seaweed flavoured beef! Wins all around.

[zwieback]

I wonder if it affects the flavor of the milk.

[jayalpha]

For sure it does. People in Europe pay a premium for "high mountains cow milk" ("Alpenmilch").

I had the impression that US milk has no taste but always thought it's just in my mind. But when I was in Colombia I met a guy from Switzerland who studied in Canada and said:"Oh wow, the milk here really tastes good like in Europe. Not like in Canada." So the milk in Europe and North America must indeed taste different. It is not just in my head.

[prudhvirajs]

Can't a cow just eat what it wants?? Why put it on some superficial diet ?? is it not equal to saying all humans should eat one type of food to reduce global warming ?

[tobr]

Sorry to break it to you, but we force cows to do all sorts of things they'd rather not.

[seba_dos1]

Humans should actually adjust their diet to reduce global warming and there's nothing wrong in saying that - that's one of the most effective methods of influence.

I'm not a vegetarian, but I live with one and I eat really small amounts of meat now compared to what I used to. I have no issues with that whatsoever, it's often even better and tastier this way, despite of me being a vegetable hater. I really can't see a reason why people so ridiculously defend their meat meals like they're addicted.