Wahlquist, Asa K. â€å“eating Beef: Cattle, Methane and Food Production.ã¢â‚¬â

Researchers at the University of California, Davis are testing whether adding seaweed to cows' feed reduces marsh gas emissions. Merrit Kennedy/NPR hide caption

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Merrit Kennedy/NPR

Researchers at the Academy of California, Davis are testing whether adding seaweed to cows' feed reduces methane emissions.

Merrit Kennedy/NPR

Scientists think they can reduce greenhouse gas emissions past tweaking the food that cows eat. A recent experiment from the University of California, Davis suggests that adding seaweed to cattle feed can dramatically decrease their emissions of the potent gas marsh gas.

Livestock is a major source of greenhouse gases worldwide. About quarter of the methyl hydride emissions due to man activity in the U.Due south. tin exist chalked upwardly to gas released from these animals, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

In that location's a pen at the University of California, Davis, where scientists were closely observing 12 research cows on a recent morning. Each brute is known by a four digit number — except for the friendliest i.

"We only call her Ginger, she's the only i with a proper noun," laughs graduate student Breanna Roque.

On this morning, Roque is mixing up breakfast for the inquiry cows. She's pulling out nighttime, gooey clumps of a seaweed species chosen Asparagopsis armata.

"I'll sprinkle it in, I'll kind of rub it together with the hay, mix it around, so we really come through and pitchfork the whole ration," she says.

Roque adds a little chip of molasses, likewise, which the cows seem to appreciate. She mixes it all thoroughly because some cows don't similar the salty seaweed taste. Every bit animal science professor Ermias Kebreab, who is leading the experiment, puts information technology: "It but works if they consume it."

Kebreab says that as cows assimilate their fibrous food, methane is produced by microbes in the rumen, the first chamber of the moo-cow'south iv-office stomach, in what he calls a "natural procedure of fermentation." It'south kind of like how yeast produces carbon dioxide in beer.

The cows then burp that methane out, into the atmosphere. He says belches are a bigger trouble than farts: "Over 95 percent, actually, is from the oral cavity, from the front finish of the moo-cow."

Kebreab says they're hoping that the seaweed can inhibit an enzyme that's involved in producing marsh gas in a cow's gut, a chemical reaction discovered by researchers in Australia.

To examination the theory, the researchers divided the cows into iii groups. Ane of the groups received a "high dose" of seaweed, amounting to 1 per centum of its feed. Some other received half that, and the final group received no handling.

The cows lumber up, each heading to its own specially prepared meal. They've been taught to come to the same stall every time to feed, unlocking it with a yellow sensor dangling around their necks. Roque says: "When it has to do with feed, they can be trained."

To test whether the seaweed is working, the cows apply a kind of breathalyzer at to the lowest degree three times a solar day, where they swallow a cookie as they stick their heads into a machine that measures the gases in their breath.

The scientists institute a dramatic reduction in methane emissions from the cows that ate seaweed. Merrit Kennedy/NPR hibernate caption

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Merrit Kennedy/NPR

This is the tertiary fourth dimension they've run the experiment, each for a period of ii weeks. Kebreab says they noticed a divergence in emissions right away. "The results are almost immediate. You give [it to] them this day, and the adjacent twenty-four hours you see the reduction."

And the drib in marsh gas was fifty-fifty more than than they expected. He remembers the first numbers coming in. "When Breanna was sending me these results, I was similar, are y'all sure?" Kebreab says.

Their experiment found that the high dose of seaweed reduced marsh gas production by more than half, what he describes as a "dramatic reduction in methane emissions."

At the loftier dose of seaweed, the researchers likewise noticed a modest drib in the amount of feed the cows were eating and the amount of milk they were producing. "It's basically the palatability upshot. Information technology's something that they haven't had before, and when yous have it at 1 per centum they smell it. Information technology smells like the ocean, I guess," says Kebreab. "That's why our side by side piece of work is going to be how to deliver the seaweed and then they don't notice information technology."

The researchers recently presented their findings at the annual meeting of the American Dairy Scientific discipline Association in Knoxville, Tenn.

Another crucial question that the team worried about is whether the seaweed diet would change the taste of the cows' milk. Even with a dramatic reduction in emissions, most people aren't looking for a salty umami twist in their milkshakes.

So they brought in 25 panelists for a blind sense of taste test. Joan King Salwen is a founder of Elm Innovations, a nonprofit trying to explore the adoption of this technology if it proves scientifically sound. "The panelists report no 'off-notes' – no unexpected flavors or odors," Salwen says. "It was certainly a relief that the sample milk tasted just like milk, rather than seaweed or common salt or fish!"

The researchers even tasted ice cream made out of the milk, which Salwen says was delicious.

This emissions news could be particularly helpful for the livestock manufacture in California, where the state has introduced a programme that aims to cut methane emissions by 40 percent from 2013 levels by 2030.

There's still a long style to get before the seaweed treatment can be implemented at scale. The scientists are analyzing whether the seaweed changes the nutritional content of milk. They're as well planning an experiment over a longer fourth dimension span, this time with beefiness cattle instead of dairy. Kebreab says it will aim "to understand the long-term effects of seaweed on the health of the animals and the productivity of the animals."

And if all goes well, scientists and the livestock industry will have a new puzzle: What'southward the best way to grow a whole lot of seaweed?

"At that place's a groovy deal of work that needs to be done looking at the scaling up of growing Asparagopsis as a crop," Salwen says. "There always are unintended consequences of big-scale business innovations." Because the bespeak of this research is to assist the surround, she says they want to be sure to avoid inadvertent side effects, such as harming ocean ecosystems or creating additional emissions from aircraft.

And should the seaweed treatment become widely adopted, Salwen wants to make certain that farmers themselves do not stop up bearing the full cost of "providing something that is in our common and shared interest."

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Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/07/03/623645396/surf-and-turf-to-reduce-gas-emissions-from-cows-scientists-look-to-the-ocean

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