Scientists appear to have solved one of the biggest environmental challenges facing the global meat industry — how to dramatically reduce methane emissions from cow burps.
Now the race is on as several companies try to commercialise their feed-additive tonics as pills, pellets and powders.
Dutch company Royal DSM has spent the past decade developing a chemically made powder that executive Mark van Nieuwland said reduced methane emissions, when fed to feedlot cattle, by up to 92 per cent.
"It really depends on what's their diet and ration combinations," he said.
"So we've seen anywhere between 50 and 90 per cent [emissions reduction]."
The product, Bovaer, or 3-NOP, is made from nitric acid and bio-based alcohol.
"It's been absolutely safe to feed to animals," Mr van Nieuwland said.
"It has gone through for example the European food safety authorities, which looks at safety for humans, safety for animals, safety for the environment and of course efficacy."
How big is the problem?
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), methane is responsible, "for around 30 per cent of the rise in global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution".
So reducing methane emissions is crucial to "limiting" further warming "and improving air quality".
Earlier this week, the IEA released its annual Global Methane Tracker.
It showed that in 2022, agriculture was the largest source of methane emissions for Australia and the world.
Australia's share of global methane emissions was estimated to be 1.6 per cent.
Drilling down further, the Australian government's 2020 National Inventory Report, published in May 2022, estimated the Australian agriculture sector produced 12.9 per cent of net national carbon dioxide equivalent emissions.
Enteric fermentation (the digestive process which results in livestock burping) was responsible for 68.2 per cent of those emissions.
So in short, finding a way to reduce methane emissions from cow burps will be significant in tackling climate change.
Coles sees a role for feed additives
As part of its push to be more sustainable, Coles livestock and innovation manager Maria Crawford said the supermarket giant had been involved with a feedlot trial of Bovaer.
"It's looking like it's going to be something that we can implement … so we're really looking forward to being able to utilise that within our supply chain," she said.
Several years ago the CSIRO found feeding cattle red seaweed, or asparagopsis, can reduce methane emissions in livestock by up to 90 per cent.
Asparagopsis is now being commercialised by companies like CH4 Australia.
CH4 Australia's general manager, Adam Main, said the company dried and milled the seaweed into a powder that went into an animal's regular feed mix at a rate of 50 grams a day.
"All of our trials, have shown that cows enjoy, eat and benefit from eating the seaweed," he said.
Building on seaweed
Hot on the heels of the seaweed companies, Perth businessman David Messina's startup company, Rumin8, set out to stabilise the active ingredient in asparagopsis, bromoform.
He says it has achieved its goal and is now using bromoform to make synthetic feed additives, such as powders, pellets and slow-release tablets known as boluses.
"A good example is aspirin," Mr Messina said.
"[It] naturally occurs on the bark of willow trees.
"We obviously don't grow willow trees to supply our aspirin requirements … now we do that in a pharmaceutical production environment, that can be scaled, gets the cost down and gives you an exact amount in every tablet.
"[That's] what we're doing with the bioactive out of the seaweed."
Rumin8 is still in a testing phase.
Laboratory results suggest it reduces methane emissions by up to 95 per cent but the company believes a good field result would be more than 85 per cent.
Products for grazing cattle will be key
So far a lot of the trial work being done on methane reduction additives has happened in feedlots.
But Rumin8 is testing a soluble product, at Central Queensland University in Rockhampton, that could work for grazing and rangelands cattle.
"The product that we're delivering via water systems, will be used anywhere where the animals are grazing," Mr Messina said.
"So that could be southern farming systems, or it could be the extensive rangelands systems, where animals are only seen once or twice a year."
So how much will it cost?
University of Melbourne livestock systems expert Richard Eckard said one of the biggest factors for farmers would be how much the products cost.
"There are a few studies around at the moment that say in the livestock industries 20 cents per day, per animal, is about the limit of what farmers could pay and come out neutral," Professor Eckard said.
Rumin8 is aiming for a cost per day per animal of 27 cents and Bovaer costs 50 cents a day for beef cattle.
Adam Main from CH4 Australia couldn't give an exact price for its asparagopsis additive but agreed it was around $2 a day per cow.
"That's not the large scale, scaled-up version price but that's absolutely a reasonable amount for now," he said.
What early adopters think
Mark Ritchie, a farmer near Mansfield in north-east Victoria, supplies a new range of carbon neutral beef sold by Coles.
He said 75 per cent of his farm's emissions came from methane and while he'd planted lots of trees and tried to run an efficient herd, his beef only really became carbon neutral when Coles bought carbon credits to offset it.
"We can do all those fine-tuning things but until we crack the nut of reducing emissions, it's going to be reasonably hard work," he said.
But Mr Ritchie was "very hopeful" feed additives would eventually help.
"It's going to be a licence, or a ticket, to play the game," he said.
"You know, you need this information if you want to be involved in niche markets or perhaps the general market, going forward."
Sources of chart: Australian emissions per segment, per year
Key source: IEA. * Agriculture, Waste, and Other sources: Average based on United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (2022), Greenhouse Gas Data Interface, available at: https://di.unfccc.int/; O'Rourke, P. R, Smith, S. J., Mott, A., Ahsan, H., McDuffie, E. E., Crippa, M., Klimont, S., McDonald, B., Z., Wang, Nicholson, M. B, Feng, L., and Hoesly, R. M. (2021, February 05). Community Emissions Data System (CEDS) v-2021-02-05 Emission Data 1975-2019 (Version Feb-05-2021). Available at: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4509372.; Crippa, M., Guizzardi, D., Solazzo, E., Muntean, M., Schaaf, E., Monforti-Ferrario, F., Banja, M., Olivier, J.G.J., Grassi, G., Rossi, S., Vignati, E. (2021), GHG emissions of all world countries - 2021 Report, EUR 30831 EN, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2021, ISBN 978-92-76-41547-3, doi:10.2760/173513, JRC126363; (2022) EDGAR - Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) v7.0 Greenhouse Gas Emissions. European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC) [Dataset] PID: https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/dataset_ghg70; Climate Watch (2022), Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (2022). Climate Watch data: Climate Watch, 2022, GHG Emissions, Washington, DC: World Resources Institute. FAO 2022, FAOSTAT Emissions Database. Available at: https://www.climatewatchdata.org/ghg-emissions.
** Energy sources: Estimates from end-uses are for 2020 or 2021 (IEA, Greenhouse gas emissions from energy, 2022, https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/data-product/greenhouse-gas-emissions-from-energy).
