The Agricultural Methane Reduction Challenge was announced back in November, and received 86 applications, both Canadian and international, a federal news release said.

The semi-finalists will receive up to $153,846 and will move on to the prototype development phase of the challenge. Finalists will be chosen next spring.

The semi-finalists are:

• AbacusBio’s entry is a tool that selects beef sires based on predicted progeny enteric methane footprint.
• Agropur proposed a feed strategy that uses a dry-extrusion, linseed-based feed ingredient for dairy cow rations.
• Ample Agriculture is developing a feed additive that reduces methane-producing organisms in the rumen.
• ArkeaBio is developing a vaccine to reduce enteric methane production.
• Mon Systeme Fourrager is working on a “decision support tool” for forage systems to help producers adopt methane-reducing strategies.
• Pond Technologies uses a feed additive that reduces methane emissions and makes more energy from feed available to cattle, leading to faster growth or more milk production.
• Semex proposes to develop a breeding protocol and incentive strategy for farmers to incorporate selection for low methane genetics into their breeding programs, and to measure, record and verify methane reductions over time.
• Sustainable Bio Security Inc. uses ozone to decrease methane production through “improving the overall health in dairy farms.”
• TerraWave Radar Solutions uses radio waves to monitor soil quality to identify richer soil areas for optimized grazing.
• Université Laval uses biofiltration, which involves passing exhaust air through an organic substrate to turn methane into carbon dioxide and water vapour.
• WaterPuris uses textile ECG sensors and oxygenated nanobubble water technology to improve overall animal health.
• University of Saskatchewan is evaluating the impact of identifying and selecting genetic traits that allow cattle to eat and digest more fibre while potentially producing less methane.
• University of Saskatchewan is also evaluating various products delivered through drinking water systems as a practical method to reduce enteric emissions in beef cattle grazing systems.

The post Semi-finalists announced in cattle methane reduction challenge appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Elanco Animal Health is licensed to market Bovaer in North America. Canada cleared the feed additive and its active ingredient, 3NOP, earlier this year.

One tablespoon of Bovaer per lactating dairy cow a day can reduce methane emissions by about 30 per cent, or about 1.2 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions annually, the company said. Bovaer works by suppressing the enzyme in a cow’s rumen, part of its stomach, that forms methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

The feed ingredient would help dairy food companies to buy carbon credits from their own farms and create a value stream of $20 a cow, Elanco CEO Jeffrey Simmons told Reuters.

Feeding one million cows Bovaer would reduce emissions equivalent to removing more than 285,000 cars from the road for a year, Elanco estimated.

The post U.S. FDA clears methane-reducing feed additive Bovaer appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

It’s being heralded as a tool to help those industries achieve their greenhouse gas reduction goals. But is Bovaer safe for animals and the humans that consume their products? A retired researcher gives her thumbs-up on both counts.

“We did a lot of research in Canada and it’s been studied in different production systems around the world,” said Karen Beauchemin, who worked for the AAFC Lethbridge Research and Development Centre, the first centre to research the active compound in Bovaer.

“It’s been deemed by a number of countries to be safe. There’s lots of scientific evidence that it works. So I’m really happy to see it finally be approved.”

That active compound called 3-Nitrooxypropanol, or 3NOP, limits greenhouse gases from methane emissions by controlling cattle burps. Its safety is ensured by degrading into metabolites (substances produced during metabolism) that are already present in the rumen, said Beauchemin.

“There’s absolutely no carryover. There’s been a number of toxicology and safety studies. Those studies have been published and it’s been deemed to be completely safe.”

Its approval in 58 countries to date also speaks to its safety, she said.

“It’s not an antibiotic, it’s not a hormone, it doesn’t have the same risk factors that some other compounds have.”

If Beuchemin has any misgivings about methane reduction, it’s that scientists don’t know its long-term, multigenerational effects.

“It’s not so much about 3NOP. If you reduce methane by 30 or 40 per cent for several years in a row, we don’t know those long-term effects.”

Bovaer comes in a powder form that is mixed with feed at around one to 1.5 grams per cow per day. According to dsm-firmenich (DSM), the Switzerland-based producers of Bovaer, cattle feeders can reduce methane emissions by an average of 45 per cent by using the ingredient. In the case of dairy cows, Bovaer can “reduce methane emissions by 30 per cent on average, potentially lowering the overall greenhouse gas footprint per litre of milk by 10 to 15 per cent.”

According to Mark van Nieuwland, president of Bovaer under DSM, feed supplemented with Bovaer enters the rumen where it’s broken down, in the process generating hydrogen and carbon. These are converted into methane by a group of micro-organisms called methanogens.

“Bovaer interacts with this enzymatic process and temporarily inhibits its activity,” said van Nieuwland. “As part of the inactivation, Bovaer is broken down into natural compounds which are already present and processed by the cow’s normal digestive and metabolic processes.”

Its effects work for about six hours. 3NOP, and by extension Bovaer, can only work in ruminants because they have the digestive capacity for it, said Beauchemin.

“If you reduce methane emissions, there has to be another ‘sink’ that will wrap up that hydrogen. In the rumen there’s a number of different ways that hydrogen can go,” she said.

3NOP is an “inhibitory compound,” which assures its safety to the animal.

“It doesn’t kill the organisms in the rumen. It just interferes with that last step in the biochemical pathway by which methane is formed in the rumen.”

Beauchemin discovered in her 3NOP research that it always works as a methane inhibitor. However, the extent to which it works depends on the dose and the diet.

“If you have a high fibre diet, you get less of a reduction in methane. If you have a high grain diet, you get more of a reduction,” she said.

“For example, in our feedlot with animals that are fed a very high grain diet, we see a 40 to 80 per cent reduction in methane. In a backgrounding diet where we have a lot of silage being fed, a lot of fibre, then it’s anywhere between 20 and 40 per cent depending on the diet and the dose.”

van Nieuwland said high fibre diets have a higher initial methane footprint than grain.

“If you look at absolute reductions they’re actually quite comparable,” he said. “What matters at the end of the day is how many times can we reduce absolute (methane) and there I would say (the two diets) work quite similar.”

One weakness of 3NOP, at least for now, is that it isn’t designed for cows in all feeding situations, said Beauchemin.

“If it’s a grazing animal where you’re not feeding a diet, you can’t use 3NOP (because) it only works when it’s incorporated into the diet, which doesn’t represent all of our animals,” she said. “We need a whole bunch of different strategies to reduce methane in a comprehensive method around all different types of production systems. Feeding 3NOP is only part of the equation.”

DSM is already on the case, said van Nieuwland.

“We have already demonstrated that it works when cows eat grass only. We are currently working on forms that could also be effective in a pasture situation.”

Beauchemin is hoping 3NOP-based methane inhibition doesn’t become the be-all and end-all of how the beef and dairy industries target methane. Another possibility in the future is to selectively breed for low-emitting cattle.

“Geneticists are saying this is a heritable trait. There are a number of studies that show that it is a heritable characteristic. So can we actually put methane into our selection index so that when we select sires, we have low emitting cattle?

“For example, if you take 100 animals and they’re all basically from the same genetic origins, they’re all the same body weight, and they are all treated the same and eat the same, etc., you can measure about a 30 per cent difference between the high emitter and the low emitter.”

The possibilities don’t end there.

“Low methane vaccines are a technically challenging problem, but I think we’re going to see them within 10 years,” said Beauchemin in a Jan. 30 Manitoba Co-operator story.

Then there’s seaweed. Some forms of seaweed and algae have shown potential to reduce methane emissions in ruminant animals, said Beauchemin. But those solutions come with their own set of problems. Scraping seaweed from the oocean is expensive and growing it in tanks has a considerable carbon footprint.

Also, one of the leading algaes with methane-inhibiting potential has a questionable element. Studies have shown that red sea plume can reduce methane in the rumen by 90 per cent. However, its active component, bromoform, is classified as a probable human carcinogen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

But there’s hope beyond red algae. Beauchemin has been researching the efficacy of red, brown and green seaweeds.

“What we’ve found so far is that some of them could have a small effect. We’re looking at maybe 10 or 20 per cent production mitigation,” she said in April 2023. “There may be some opportunities for other seaweeds that have bioactive components other than bromoform.”

The post The science of burp-busting in cattle appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Bovaer neutralizes methane in the rumen. When microbes in the rumen break down feed, hydrogen and carbon dioxide are released. These two gases are combine in the presence of an enyzme. Bovaer works by suppressing the enzyme, reducing the amount of methane that is created.

Dsm-firmenich, the Dutch company selling the product says it could be available in Canada within a few weeks.

The feed additive will be a tool for farmers to reduce methane emissions for cattle, but Canadian research has also shown a small increase in feed efficiency and no change in cattle growth rate.

“This will benefit Canadian farmers, efforts of the sector, and support Canada in delivering on its international emissions reduction commitments such as the Global Methane Pledge,” says Mark van Nieuwland, vice-president of Bovaer.

Canadian cattle feeders can reduce methane emissions by an average of 45 per cent by using the ingredient, says the company.

In the case of dairy cows, Bovaer can “reduce methane emissions by 30 per cent on average, potentially lowering the overall greenhouse gas footprint per liter of milk by 10 to 15 per cent.”

A trial run in large trial run in Alberta provided Canadian data to support the approval of Bovaer.

“In 2020, dsm-firmenich successfully completed the longest and largest trial with Bovaer,” said van Nieuwland. “(It was) a two-year trial with 15,000 beef cattle in Alberta and supported by ERA (Emission Reduction Alberta), which demonstrated methane reductions of up to 82 per cent, resulting in savings of 1,473 tons of CO2e during this study alone.”

The company says that once the product is included as a tool in programs such as the Reducing Enteric Methane Emissions (REME) protocol for beef cattle and the Alberta Fed Cattle protocol, cattle feeders will also be able to generate carbon offsets from its use. The authorization comes on the heels of the CFIA approval of 3-Nitrooxypropanol (3NOP) — the active ingredient in Bovaer — earlier this week.

“We are very pleased to see the regulatory pathway open for innovative feed ingredients that reduce methane emissions which will contribute to our sector meeting its 2030 emissions goal,” says Nathan Phinney, Canadian Cattle Association president.

“We applaud the CFIA for their diligence on this file to ensure this new tool is available, which will allow Canadian beef producers to remain competitive globally.”

According to the CCA/National Cattle Feeders’ Association release, 3NOP has shown no negative impacts on the rumen microbial population when fed to cattle.

The Canadian beef industry has set a goal to reduce primary production greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions intensity by 33 per cent by 2030. Dairy Farmers of Canada has a goal of net zero emissions by 2050.

Karen Beauchemin, retired Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) research scientist, was a key player in the Canadian research.

“I think beef producers are interested in doing their part, but just focusing on enteric methane emissions is not going to get Canada where it needs to be by 2030,” said Beauchemin, in a 2022 interview with Canadian Cattlemen. She worked with AAFC’s Lethbridge research station.

Enteric methane emissions from cattle contribute 3.3 per cent of Canada’s total GHG emissions.

“One thing I find with consumers is they have a real misconception about how much enteric methane from animals contributes to our national greenhouse gas budget,” said Beauchemin in the article.

The product has been approved in more than 50 countries in the world, but as of early 2024, not yet in the United States.

—Jeff Melchior writes for the Alberta Farmer Express. 

–updated Feb. 1 to add additional details, context.

The post First-of-its-kind cattle methane limiter approved for Canada appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.