Cow Burps – Cattle Industry Poised To Lead The Way To A Cooler Earth By Reducing Methane Content

A new study out of the University of California at Davis shows a dramatic reduction in cattle methane emissions using red seaweed as a feed supplement. It also significantly reduced the cost of feed. The five-month study found that these reductions were sustained with no change in animal health or in the quality of the beef.

The study, supported by Blue Ocean Barns but independently carried out by researchers at U.C. Davis, found that the supplement, derived from red seaweed, lowered farmers’ feed requirements by 14% with no diminishing of the animal’s weight gain. The study also confirmed past research with dairy cows that the seaweed supplement cut methane production from digestion by more than 80%. 

The U.C. Davis study demonstrated that the methane reductions were sustained during the entire 147-day trial, which was longer and included more cattle than any prior study.

Previous studies of other methane-reducing technologies have shown that cattle digestive systems adapted to those additives, making those additives less effective over time.

This new study showed that the health and safety of the cattle were not compromised. A taste test conducted as part of the U.C. Davis study described that participants reported consistent positive flavor and tenderness. Similarly, following an earlier dairy trial, testers at Organic Valley’s headquarters in Wisconsin found that the seaweed did not impact the flavor or fragrance of the milk.

So all benefit with no apparent down-side.

While often referred to by an anatomically-incorrect description, it's cow belching that emits the most methane, resulting from enteric fermentation in the rumen, a multi-chambered stomach found almost exclusively among some artiodactyl mammals, such cattle, deer, and camels, enabling them to eat cellulose-enhanced tough plants, such as grass, that animals with a single-chambered stomach, like humans, cannot digest.

Enteric fermentation is the digestive process of converting complex sugars into simple molecules for absorption into the cow’s bloodstream, producing methane as a by-product.

Blue Ocean Barns has developed a proprietary, natural feed supplement from the red seaweed that will allow farmers to easily integrate it into cattle diets. The product, which makes up less than 0.3% of the cattle’s feed, prevents hydrogen from binding to carbon atoms during digestion, so not much methane is created.

Instead, the cow burps carbon dioxide and hydrogen gas at levels that are not harmful to the atmosphere.

The reason this is really cool is that methane gas contributes nearly half of all global warming effects from human activities in the short term – and cattle and other grazing animals represent 40% of that annually. The problem with methane is that it is much more more effective at trapping heat than CO2. But after a couple of decades, the methane decays to CO2, and just picks up in the atmosphere where CO2 would have anyway.

While methane has an atmospheric half-life of about 9 years, CO2 has an atmospheric half-life of between 30 and 300 years depending on the specific decay or removal pathway, of which there are a few.

Scientists at U.C. Davis, including professors and graduate students like Breanna Roque, noted in their study that red seaweed achieves the most dramatic reductions in cattle methane output among all available technology and supplements. “We have evaluated several additives for methane reductions over the past decade, and the seaweed demonstrated significant savings we haven’t seen before,” said lead researcher Dr. Ermias Kebreab, the Sesnon Endowed Professor in the Department of Animal Science.

“The opportunity to equip meat and dairy producers with a way to offer climate-positive products while also reducing their highest cost, feed, is a win for farmers, consumers, the animals, and the environment.”

Albert Straus, founder of Straus Family Creamery and a pioneering organic dairy farmer, has received a USDA National Organic Program waiver to use the Blue Ocean Barns supplement in a six-week experiment on his farm in Marin County, California. 

Larger-scale farmers are eager to reduce their climate impact. “It is exciting to see that Blue Ocean Barns’ hard work and persistence is beginning to yield fruit,” said C.A. Russell, owner of Yosemite Jersey Dairy in Hilmar, California. “It could improve the lives of all of us.”

"Coming from a farming family, I know firsthand how important it is to run an efficient business and exercise stewardship over resources,” said Joan Salwen, co-founder and CEO of Blue Ocean Barns. Salwen was born into a farm family, built a first career as a senior partner at Accenture ACN . Several years later, she became a fellow at Stanford, where she studied ways in which farming and food systems can be improved to both feed a growing world and protect that world. 

“We are thrilled to provide farmers with a product that is good for both their bottom lines and for the planet, hopefully playing a role to ensure the success of future generations of farm families.”