Livestock is responsible for 14.5% of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, especially methane, which is the second largest gas of this type present in the atmosphere after carbon dioxide. Cows are the main sources of methane, specifically their flatulence and burps. New Zealand, for example, will start taxing farmers on methane from their livestock in 2025. So having a herd whose animals permanently emit less methane seems like a good idea at first. And now it begins to be possible.
Semex, a Canadian company, offers farmers around the world semen from Holstein (also called Friesian) bulls – whose specimens are dedicated to milk production – selecting those whose genetic traits include producing fewer emissions of methane.
The idea is that farmers inseminate their cows with the sperm of these bulls and thus end up having a herd that progressively reduces the emissions of this gas. Semex claims that if its solution were to be widely adopted, methane emissions into the atmosphere could be reduced by between 20 and 50% by 2050. The idea is that if this process is replicated generation after generation, its positive impact will become more significant.
If widely adopted, low-methane breeding could have a “profound impact” on livestock emissions globally, Frank Mitloehner, a professor of animal science at the University of California Davis, who was unrelated to the research, told Reuters. investigation.
Until now, the only way to get more environmentally friendly cattle was to add an additive to the animals’ feed that reduced the amount of gas, but its effects wear off once the cattle stop eating them and they are not approved for use. use in some countries.
To select the specimens, “for more than five years, milk registration organizations in Canada collected more than 13 million milk mid-infrared spectroscopy (MIR) records. Geneticists analyzed more than 700,000 first-lactation MIR records to predict methane emissions from registered dairy cows in Canada.”
The scientists captured the cattle’s exhalations to measure methane and then compared the data with genetic information and milk samples. “The results showed that methane emissions can be substantially reduced with genetic selection,” they explain from Semex. In the end “we have genomic information and we compare it and we create almost a telephone directory to say, ‘this animal has these genes and produces so much methane,'” adds the Canadian company.
But there are those who do not quite see clearly that this solution is not without problems. In this sense, Juha Nousiainen, senior vice president of Valio, a Finnish dairy, warned that raising cattle to burp less methane can create digestive problems in animals. According to Nousiainen, the methane is produced by microbes in the cow’s gut as it digests the fiber, not by the animal itself.
Last spring, the company began marketing low-methane semen in 80 countries. The first sales include a farm in Britain and dairies in the United States and Slovakia, Semex vice president Drew Sloan said.
