AFP – A scientist guides a long tube into the mouth and down to the stomach of Thing 1, a two-month-old calf that is part of a research project aiming to prevent cows from burping methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
A postdoctoral researcher at University of California in Davis Paulo de Meo Filho is part of an ambitious experiment aiming to develop a pill to transform cow gut bacteria so it emits less or no methane.
While the fossil fuel industry and some natural sources emit methane, cattle farming has become a major climate concern due to the volume of the cows’ emissions.
“Almost half of the increase in (global) temperature that we’ve had so far, it’s been because of methane,” said an animal science professor at UC Davis Ermias Kebreab.
Methane, the second largest contributor to climate change after carbon dioxide (CO2), breaks down faster than CO2 but is more potent.
“Methane lives in the atmosphere for about 12 years” unlike carbon dioxide which persists for centuries, Kebreab said.
“If you start reducing methane now, we can actually see the effect on the temperature very quickly.”
Filho uses the tube to extract liquid from Thing 1’s rumen – the first stomach compartment containing partially digested food.
Using the rumen liquid samples, the scientists are studying the microbes that convert hydrogen into methane, which is not digested by the cow but instead burped out. A single cow will burp roughly 100 kilogrammes of the gas annually.
Scientists hope to achieve similar results by introducing genetically modified microbes that soak up hydrogen, starving methane-producing bacteria at the source. However, the team proceeds cautiously.
“We can’t just simply cut down methane production by removing” methane-making bacteria, as hydrogen could accumulate to the point of harming the animal, warned Matthias Hess, who runs the UC Davis lab.
“Microbes are kind of social critters. They really like to live together,” he said.
“The way they interact and affect each other impacts the overall function of the ecosystem.”
