A vaccine to make cows fart less! Just a "Did you know”
There’s an innovative approach being developed to reduce methane emissions from cows, which involves creating a ‘vaccine’ that targets the microbes in their digestive systems responsible for methane production.
Current progress:
ArkeaBio, a startup, is working on a vaccine that could be administered to cattle, sheep, and goats. They’ve recently raised a significant amount of funding to support their research¹².
The vaccine aims to trigger the animals to generate antibodies against the methane-producing microbes in their gut. This could potentially help shrink their production of methane, a potent greenhouse gas¹.
Methane is over 80 times more potent than CO2 in terms of warming the atmosphere in the short term, so reducing methane emissions from livestock is seen as a crucial step in combating climate change¹.
The challenge lies in developing a vaccine that works effectively in the complex digestive system of cows and can be scaled commercially¹.
Other methods to reduce methane emissions in cows include dietary changes, like adding seaweed to cattle feed, but these solutions are not always practical for farms where animals graze freely¹.
