To summarize: people have known that cows’ methane production can be reduced with an appropriate diet for quite some years. There has been a fair bit of searching for what that diet could be - tropical algae from high seas may produce the right outcome but aren’t readily available where the cows graze.
It is nice to learn that daffodils also do the trick, and reduce methane production by “at least 30%” (a cautious estimate, some results using artificial cow stomachs have given a reduction of 96%).
I’m always skeptical of this kind of news (but thanks for sharing it regardless). Even if it works, it won’t be the first solution we get, and the others still have yet to be put to use.
A better alternative is to try to eat less meat and dairy. I tried it a few years ago, slowly adding more vegan meals to my diet and it was surprisingly easy for me (but first I tried out various types of vegan or vegetarian foods to see what I liked). Better for the environment, better for the cows, better for me. I never quit completely but I rarely buy meat at the grocery store anymore. Even reducing significantly I feel can have an impact.
Even without the methane, raising cows still emit a significant amount of gas that cause climate change.
Of course on a wide scale if it was required for this industry then it would be great. But this is the kind of solution that gets in the way of reducing subsidies to animal farming (or regulating it further). So I’m wary it might be used for greenwashing or only when the pressure mounts to affect that industry in a real way, as a delaying tactic to evade more drastic measures, which might be more efficient at preserving the climate.
Adding an extract from the flowers to livestock feed reduced methane in artificial cow stomachs by 96%. [emphasis added]
what’s the difference in methane production between cattle on feed versus allowing cattle to graze? we already know that feed corn and grain introduces a whole slew of gastrointestinal problems and health issues …
I wish I knew, but I can’t answer. Intuition suggests that they didn’t run the experiment with grazing cows, because then they wouldn’t have an overview of what was eaten, and how much was eaten - and measuring would be far more difficult.
Hmm, I wonder if it is the same or a similar compound found in some marine algae that have the same effect 🤔
I suspect the compound isn’t necessarily the same as in Asparagopsis taxiformis (one of the weeds that work), but the similarity is on another level of abstraction - it influences the gut microbiome in the same way, favouring certain bacterial species and metabolic paths over others (because bacteria often have a choice of “how to eat” - which chemical reactions to perform).
Can’t be sure with the limited information published, though.