No miracle solutions expected to reduce cattle emissions

Nobody should expect a miracle additive or measure to shut down methane emissions from cattle, says a senior Agriculture Canada researcher.

Methane comes from the fundamental process of ruminant digestion, so it’s unlikely to be eliminated while productivity is maintained.

“For the most part, these are going to only result in marginal reductions in methane emissions and won’t generate the dramatic reductions that we require,” Tim McAllister, a ruminant nutrition expert based in Lethbridge, told a sustainability conference organized by the University of Manitoba’s National Centre for Livestock and the Environment.

The ruminant gut is a complex processing system that employs microbes to produce enzymes to digest the otherwise indigestible plant material that gets turned into muscle or milk by cattle’s bodies. That process creates hydrogen, which can interfere with gut fermentation, but the creation of methane allows that hydrogen to be transformed and removed from the gut. That’s where the emissions come from.