Climate-friendly cows bred to burp less methane

WINNIPEG, Manitoba, Aug 8 (Reuters) – When Canadian dairy farmer Ben Loewith’s calves are born next spring, they will be among the first in the world to be raised with a specific environmental goal: burp less methane.

Loewith, a third-generation farmer in Lynden, Ontario, in June began artificially inseminating 107 cows and heifers with semen from first-to-market bulls with a low-methane genetic trait.

“Selective breeding to reduce emissions, as long as we don’t sacrifice other traits, seems like an easy win,” Loewith said.

The advent of commercially available genetics to produce dairy cattle that emit less methane could help reduce one of the biggest sources of the potent greenhouse gas, say scientists and livestock industry experts.

Belching is the main source of methane emissions from livestock. Semex, the genetics company that sold Loewith the semen, said adopting the low-methane trait could reduce methane emissions from Canadian dairy cattle by 1.5% per year and as much as 20-30%. by 2050.

This spring, the company began marketing semen with the methane characteristic in 80 countries. The first sales include a farm in Britain and dairies in the United States and Slovakia, Vice President Drew Sloan said.

If widely adopted, low-methane breeding could have a “profound impact” on livestock emissions globally, said Frank Mitloehner, a professor of animal science at the University of California Davis, who was not involved in the development of the characteristic.

Some dairy industry officials remain unconvinced about low-methane breeding, saying it could lead to digestion problems.

Canada’s agriculture department said in an email that it has not yet evaluated the product’s underlying methane assessment system, but that reducing emissions from livestock was “extremely important.”

Livestock accounts for 14.5% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. methane is the second largest greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide.

While farmers can feed additives to cattle to reduce methane production, their effects wear off once cattle stop eating them, and they’re not approved for use in the United States, Mitloehner said.

The low methane genetic material is the product of a partnership between Semex and Canada’s milk registration agency, Lactanet, and is based on research conducted by Canadian scientists.

Lactanet launched the world’s first national methane genomics assessment in April and has produced results from Holstein cows and heifers on 6,000 farms, representing nearly 60% of Canada’s dairy farms.

BREATH CATCH

The record was based on seven years of investigation by scientists from the University of Guelph and the University of Alberta to measure methane from dairy cattle.

The scientists captured the cattle’s exhalations to measure methane and then compared the data with genetic information and milk samples.

Methane emissions from Canadian dairy cows vary widely, from 250 to 750 grams per day, said Christine Baes, a professor of animal biosciences at the University of Guelph who worked on the project.

Selecting for the low methane trait could ensure lower and lower emissions for successive generations, he said.

“The breakthrough here is to link these different components together to have a national reproductive value estimate for methane emissions based on the actual breath of the animals,” Baes said.

“We also have genomic information and we compare it and we almost create a phone book to say, ‘this animal has these genes and it produces so much methane.'”

Initially, Semex is not charging extra for the methane feature, said Michael Lohuis, Semex’s vice president of research and innovation. He declined to provide sales projections, but expects sales to stay down until financial incentives emerge.

The Canadian government does not currently offer incentives for low-methane cattle ranching, but the agriculture department said in an email that Ottawa is working to introduce offset credits to reduce methane through better manure management.

Some countries and feed companies have started encouraging farmers to switch to low-emission livestock.

new zealand will start tax farmers methane from livestock by 2025.

be protected (NESN.S) and Burger King parent Restaurant Brands International (QSR.TO) they are tackling methane in their supply chains by changing what cattle eat.

Mitloehner said he hopes companies will eventually recognize low-methane breeding as well.

“The genetic change is permanent and cumulative over future generations, so it can add up to substantial reductions,” Lohuis said. “This is certainly not the only tool dairy farmers can use to reduce on-farm methane, but it may be the simplest and lowest cost approach.”

Other dairy experts said such an approach could be problematic.

Juha Nousiainen, a senior vice president at Valio, a Finnish dairy, warned that raising cattle to burp less methane could create digestive problems.

The methane is produced by microbes in the cow’s gut as it digests the fiber, not by the animal itself, he said.

Back at his farm, Loewith is eager to see how the breeding decisions will play out.

“If it’s something that’s been duplicated generation after generation, then the impact becomes more significant.”

Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, Manitoba; Edited by Caroline Stauffer and Suzanne Goldenberg

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