Can We Reduce Cow Methane Emissions By Breeding Low-Emission Cattle? (popsci.com)

An anonymous reader quotes Popular Science: Raising cattle contributes to global warming in a big way. The animals expel large amounts of methane when they burp and fart, a greenhouse gas many times more potent than carbon dioxide. U.S. beef production, in fact, roughly equals the annual emissions of 24 million cars, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. That's a lot of methane... Researchers think there may be a better way. Rather than ask people to give up beef, they are trying to design more climate-friendly cattle.

The goal is to breed animals with digestive systems that can create less methane. One approach is to tinker with the microbes that live in the rumen, the main organ in the animals' digestive tract... Scientists in the United Kingdom last year found that a cow's genes influence the makeup of these microbial communities, which include bacteria and also Archaea, the primary producers of methane. This discovery means cattle farmers potentially could selectively breed animals that end up with a lower ratio of Archaea-to-bacteria, thus leading to less methane... "The selection to reduce methane emissions would be permanent, cumulative and sustainable over generations as with any other trait, such as growth rate, milk yield, etc. used in animal breeding." This, over time, "would have a substantial impact on methane emissions from livestock," Roehe said.
Breeding low-emission cattle would also make it cheaper to raise cattle -- and improve the quality of meat.

Comments

Raise more deer

[Khyber]

Tastier, makes better jerky, leaner, can be raised faster/reproduces quicker, requires less space, requires less food, requires less energy.

Pretty much a full-out win.

Re:Raise more deer

[blindseer]

I was just reading yesterday on how Staten Island has a deer problem so they are culling the deer. Now usually one would think this means trapping or shooting the deer but no, that would make sense. What the New York City government is doing is giving the bucks they catch a vasectomy.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

Not even a castration, which would not only be easier but also avoid the rut behavior that puts them at risk of automobile collisions as they travel around the island. They are giving the bucks a vasectomy.

Don't deer fart too? What of their methane production? Not only that but the reason they want to get rid of the deer on the island is that they are effectively an invasive species spreading disease, causing property damage, and putting people's lives at risk from automobile collisions.

The inmates are running the asylum in New York City. Those deer should be hunted for their tasty meat and to remove the risks to life and property they cause. But no one wants to vote to kill Bambi, so they spend millions of taxpayer dollars to catch the deer, give them a vasectomy, and then... let them go. That way the deer can die naturally, by getting hit by a truck.