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Feed Additive Squelches Ruminants' Methane Belches.
The global population is now nearly seven and a half billion.
And that’s just humans. Because our planet is also home to
one-and-a-half-billion cows, another billion sheep, and a
billion goats. Their combined belches account for a full fifth
of the world's methane emissions—and methane is about 30
times more potent at trapping heat than CO2.
But those methane emissions might get cut—by feeding the
grazers something called 3-nitrooxypropanol. "I can tell you,
they like it. No rejection at all." Maik Kindermann, an organic
chemist at DSM Nutritional Products in Switzerland. Liking
it, in the cow world, he says basically means they'll still
gobble up their food, even with this stuff mixed in.
Kindermann's company developed the additive a few years
back. It jams up an enzyme crucial to the production of
methane by bacteria that live inside the animals. And it
slashes the number of those methane-belching bacteria,
while leaving the rest of the microbiome intact. The result? A
30 percent decrease in methane emissions.
Kindermann says he thinks the compound could be a winwin for the planet—and the animals. "You know the
methane is kind of a waste product. And this energy, instead
of losing it for the animal, it can be reused for the animal in
terms of performance, and at the same time we are doing
something for greenhouse gas emission and climate
change." The product’s not on the market yet—toxicology
tests are ongoing. But the hope is that it might take some of
the heat off of beef.
Disponível em:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/feed-additivesquelches-ruminants-methane-belches/ Acessado em 5 de maio de
2016.