Japanese Patent "Beano" for Cows to Cut Methane Emissions

Unless you live in a city or a big town, you see them everywhere, cows—Holsteins, Brahmas, Guernseys, Beefmasters, Limusins, or, if you happen to live in Ethiopia, the aptly named Barka. Why aptly named? Because climatologists estimate that cattle bark out an astounding amount of greenhouse gas, from both ends. You might call it the wind herd 'round the world.

But cow flatulence is old news. You probably heard all about it when the United Nations released its 2006 report titled: “Livestock’s Long Shadow.” In case you haven’t seen it, you can download the whole U.N. report here.

Here's a sample:

. . .livestock . . . account[s] for 9 per cent of CO2 deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65 per cent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2. Most of this comes from manure.
And it accounts for respectively 37 per cent of all human-induced methane (23 times as warming as CO2), which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64 per cent of ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain.

Earth is home to at least a billion and a half head of cattle. That’s more than all the people living in India. And, the cattle population is growing in lock step with rising incomes, progress and development. The same U.N. report predicts:

Global meat production is projected to more than double from 229 million tonnes in 1999/2001 to 465 million tonnes in 2050, while milk output is set to climb from 580 to 1043 million tonnes. . .

So what are we going to do with a billion and a half, 1,000 pound creatures belching and crepitating us into global warming?

Beano© for cows?

Junichi Takahashi, Ph.D., a Japanese scientist at Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine in Hokkaido, Japan may have the answer, or at least part of the answer. Dr. Takahashi and friends have developed a food additive that, they say, reduces bovine global warming intestinal gas to negligible levels.

The Takahashi team discovered this remedy quite by accident. They noticed that pasture grass heavily fertilized with nitrates (not to be confused with nitrites) triggered a marked reduction in methane generation in cattle; methane exacerbates global warming 20 times more than CO2.

Then, in the course of treating a mass poisoning in a herd of cattle, the veterinary team at Obihiro U. discovered that a combination of nitrates and the amino acid cysteine not only reversed the poisoning but also cut methane gas in the herd to trivial levels. Happily, this novel feed cut gases from both ends. No word on whether nitrous oxide levels are reduced by the additive but N2O is not emitted by the cow herself but rather from the ordure she so carefully places on the ground.

Dr. Takahashi and colleagues have patented their combination food additive in a number of countries and note that it has no effect on milk production or on the taste of milk. Cattle feed manufacturers are now drooling at the prospect of creating new types of feed that will both significantly cut global warming and protect livestock from various types of poisons. These new anti-global warming feeds could sell well in developed countries but at nearly one U.S. dollar a day per cow, the price will have to come down before cattle worldwide will benefit.

Intestinal Gas G8

By a rather serendipitous turn of events, the Group of Eight, also known as the G8, plan to hold their summer summit conference this July in Japan by the shores of beautiful Lake Toya, which is in, of all places, Hokkaido. The focus of this particular G8 summit will be climate change policy and Japan’s Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda has been touting the summit as an evolutionary leap beyond the famous 1997 Kyoto conference, convened to give force to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, for short.

To date, 192 countries have ratified the so-called Kyoto Protocols in an attempt to, well let’s face it, UNFCCC the planet.

This July Prime Minister Fukuda will be able to trot out Dr. Takahashi who, presumably, will be driving a herd of red-eyed cows, a-plowing through the ragged skies, and up a cloudy draw, but with considerably less flatulence and burping than an ordinary herd.

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