A Swiss company has produced a new feed to cut the emission of methane from cattle.
According to the Agolin firm based in Biere near Lausanne in Switzerland, cows are one of the most flatulent creatures on Earth. A single cow produces the equivalent of about three tons of carbon dioxide per year.
Co-founder and managing director of Switzerland's Agolin, Kurt Schaller, told Reuters its special formula can reduce that by 10%.
"We sell our mixture for around one million cows per year. There are 25-28 million cows in the European Union, so it is a big percentage. That represents 300,000 tons of CO2 reduction today," he said. The United Nations says livestock farming alone is responsible for up to 18% of the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. Nearly a quarter of that comes from bovine flatulence.
Anne Mottet, livestock development officer at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, said that cows' burps contribute about 4% of (all) greenhouse gas emissions, and that they are responsible of about 30% of methane emissions.
Agolin says field trials have shown its product also helps increase milk yield and feed efficiency, which are benefits that farmers can more easily measure.
