Sometimes, you really don’t need to make up an April Fools joke. Truth can indeed be stranger than fiction, except for the part about “four gallons” which is part of the original Telegraph article 😉 – Anthony
From the Telegraph UK, by Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent
Fish oils reduce greenhouse emissions from ‘flatulent cows’
Cows which are fed omega 3 fatty acids belch out less greenhouse gases that cause climate change, according to scientists.
Cattle produce large amounts of methane as they digest their food and then belch out most of it through their mouths.
A herd of 200 cows can produce annual emissions of methane roughly equivalent in energy terms to driving a family car more than 100,000 miles (180,000km) on more than four gallons (21,400 litres) of petrol.
The omega 3 fatty acids found in fish oils can also help the heart and circulatory system and improve meat quality.
Speaking at the Society for General Microbiology meeting in Harrogate, Dr Lorraine Lillis, one of the researchers, said the study could help the agriculture industry cut emissions.
She said: “The fish oil affects the methane-producing bacteria in the rumen part of the cow’s gut, leading to reduced emissions.
“Understanding which microbial species are particularly influenced by changes in diet and relating them to methane production could bring about a more targeted approach to reducing methane emissions in animals.”
The UK is committed to cutting greenhouse gases by 80 per cent by 2050.
More than a third of all methane emissions in the UK is produced by farm animals. By volume, methane is 20 times more powerful at trapping solar energy than carbon dioxide making it a potent greenhouse gas.
Jonathan Scurlock, an adviser at the National Farmers Union, said farmers were willing to modify feed in order to reduce emissions but at the moment there are few affordable options on the market and he encouraged more research into the area.
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Other predatory species such as the striped bass, who depend upon menhaden as their food, begin to turn toward other food sources and deplete them as the the overfishing begins to cascade throughout the food web. In some cases, the striped bass starve, and develop bacterial lesions from lowered resistance….
http://www.chesbay.org/articles/striped%20bass%20study(1-09).asp
Ironically…the fertilizer produced from the ground-up menhaden, finds its way back into the Chesapeake Bay Watershed through fertilized lawns, golf courses, and corn farms.
Such helps produce the hypoxic and anoxic dead zones that now reside in the Chesapeake Bay water column.
Last summer brown and red tides were common, and I remember watching on the news camera shots of the normally benthic Blue Crabs becoming semi-pelagic, as they were swimming to the surface trying to get oxygen (but the water had become anoxic) so they died.
Last year, shortly thereafter, the Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab industry (after lasting for hundreds of years) was declared a disaster.
Keep in mind that, the Chesapeake, as one of the largest estuaries in the world, used to yield the highest per capita volume of fish in the world. Not anymore.
In the days of Capt. John Smith, one could see to the bottom, and there were oyster shoals that were so big, they formed little islands.
Menhaden fish and oysters have one peculiar thing in common: they are both filter feeders. They filter out impurities from the water column that no other fish want to eat.
Ahh…the oysters. Used to be the Lynnhaven Oysters were as big as a plate and considered the best in the world.
Not anymore. Every time a new crop is set out, they are gobbled up by swarms of voracious cownose rays.
The reasons the cownose rays are proliferating out of control?
There are no sharks to eat them.
Similarly, the 100+ year bay scallops fishery in North Carolina which at one time was very productive….was finally wiped out by those little devils (the cownose rays), who now that there are no sharks, are reproducing out of control.
http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/mar07/petersonshark032807.html
This is not OT here as the whole idea of fish-oil production (in the fishing reduction industry) is IN AND OF ITSLEF an environmental problem.
Please read on….
The recent Chinese catapulting of one billion people into the middle class….has given rise to the increased demand for the useless concoction of shark-fin soup which is helping deplete the world’s shark populations…
(Remember…sharks, having evolved over 450 million years in the oceans, with no natural predators up until homo sapiens, reproduce very slowly).
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=2616156&page=1
Now the 97% decrease in tiger and scalloped hammerhead sharks in the northwest Atlantic
99% decrease of the smooth hammerhead, bull, and duskys in the same…those percentages are quite alarming.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/29/AR2007032901963.html
But its not just happening in my corner of the ocean:
Sharks pronounced “functionally extinct” in the Mediterranean.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3344301/Sharks-functionally-extinct-in-Mediterranean.html
Points to ponder:
1) In the event the availability of valuable marine life cycles with the natural oscillations of the oceans, as ocean flora and fauna has evolved over hundreds of millions of years, the introduction of anthropogenic forcing over the last few hundred, hardly qualifies homo sapiens as being part of that natural oscillation.
Here is a good presentation that looks into the ebb and flow of bluefin tuna, including the natural oscillations, such as the Atlantic Multidecadal, and finds that the real problem is just plain overfishing.
http://www.iccat.int/Documents/Meetings/Docs/BFT_SYMP/pdf/BFT_SYMP_0
2) And so some American corporations [with the support of lobbyists to downplay and suppress the truth] are strip mining the local waters of the staple foods that other fish depend on, and ironically, turning them into fertilizer where they back up in our waters to create dead zones.
3) Some Chinese and Taiwanese corporations [with the support of lobbyists to downplay and a huge multi-national black market] are emptying the world’s oceans of sharks and large predatory sharks [the biggest fins get the most money!].
4) Both world powers allow these corporations to treat the oceans as a sort of free and endless supply of goods on which to make a profit and without oversight because most of what happens in the water, we never see.
NOTE: If someone went through a forest with a giant net and captured every living thing….bears, birds, all the wildlife…there would be a great outrage. But this occurs daily out in the oceans and not much attention is given because we are not there to see it.
NOTE II: Omega Protein can just as well manufacture those omega-3 vitamins from soybeans. But they don’t want to do that, because doing so would mean that they would have to spend more money. They would rather rely on their cheap, “free lunch” caught with giant purse-seine nets at sea.
Isn’t it the case that it isn’t grass-fed cows that are the problem, but cows that are fed on processed meal that’s so popular in high-density beef production? Sure I read that somewhere but I forget where.
5) So in light of all this, in terms of pollution, nutrient runoff, and overfishing, it can not be said that we as a species are not having a material adverse effect on the oceans.
And, unlike the myth of AGW and the broken Mann hockey stick, the buffonery of Al Gore and James Hansen ad nauseum…THIS is a problem that we can and should do something about.
I am not saying that sharkfishing should be banned. it just needs to be regulated.
Natural ebbs and flows of fish populations are to be expected. But we have exacerbated the situation to an almost irreversible degree.
Watch the award-winning movie Sharkwater.
http://www.sharkwater.com
You will be glad you did….
And perhaps the part of the equation here of FISH-OIL PRODUCTION needs to be examined for its own negative net effect on the ocean before it can be really applied to cow-fart mitigation (LOL).
Don’t try to solve another problem with a problem!
Anybody want to develop an indoor facility for cows that controls the methane? Or is it any worry anyway??
Wetlands give off more methane than you would ever believe. Perhaps we are barking up the wrong….um….cow posterior?
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
25,000 miles on one gallon of fuel equivalent – yeah right. One circuit of the equatorial globe on that amount of fuel should have the oil companies terrified, they won’t be able to sell the stuff fast enough. Somewhere I think practical losses have been ignored, as they frequently are in these sorts of tales. If true we’d have done it long ago.
OT – Nice to see peace-loving ecowarriors in London doing the sights in an effort to boost tourism in the downturn! A bit of polite kicking here, a little playful punching there, & of course let’s not forget that mandatory bottle throwing is always good for a laugh! The Drs & nurses think it an absolute hoot stitching somebodies face back together for fun. Of course they seem to forget (or not) that a perfectly peaceful demonstration carries more weight then any other form. BUT of course we all know that these demonstrations have little or nothing to do with AGW/CC, but rather re-alignment of the left’s power base! IMHO I hasten to add.
Didn ‘t i read that feeding omega oils to our kids makes them smarter, perish the thought we migtht get a race of intelligent cows.
The law of unitended consequences always seems to go unoticed when whacky ideas such as these are put forward, consider the strain on fisheries already under stress with overfishing, a prime example is the overfishing of sand eels used for such things as animal feed and even power plant fuel, the consequence for the sea bird population off Scotland was devastating especially for the puffin.
Silly ideas go hand in hand with silly theories, mirrors in space etc, the very last thing we need right now is a biofuels type gold rush that will almost certainly happen if oils are used by law, I am coming to the conclusion that the AGW believers inhabit a place not unlike cloud coockoo land/fantasy island!
“Lindsay H (00:33:28) :
Didn ‘t i read that feeding omega oils to our kids makes them smarter, perish the thought we migtht get a race of intelligent cows.”
Indeed
Re: Alan the Brit (00:04:34) :
“OT – Nice to see peace-loving ecowarriors in London doing the sights in an effort to boost tourism in the downturn! A bit of polite kicking here, a little playful punching there, & of course let’s not forget that mandatory bottle throwing is always good for a laugh! The Drs & nurses think it an absolute hoot stitching somebodies face back together for fun. Of course they seem to forget (or not) that a perfectly peaceful demonstration carries more weight then any other form. BUT of course we all know that these demonstrations have little or nothing to do with AGW/CC, but rather re-alignment of the left’s power base! ”
Yes! Ask anyone of this numbwits and I guarantee you wont get an intelligent response as to what they are actually demonstrating about. Baa, baa, “Environmental Anti-Capitalism”, baa, baa. Pathetic – thugs are thugs are thugs, period.
This bit seems to have been overlooked:
“Cattle produce large amounts of methane as they digest their food and then belch out most of it through their mouths”
Pity, because farting IS funnier.. 🙂
Speaking as a farmer who knows about these things, a cow’s, ahem, back passage is several inches higher than that depicted in the photo above. That poor cow in the photo seems to have a severe problem with her reproductive parts.
hereticfringe (13:19:34) :
“Hell, if methane gives you that kind of fuel economy, lets stuff hoses up their butts and collect the stuff!!!”
herericfringe,
It has already been done with amazing results.
You can run a gasoline care in methane quite easily and with an amazing performance.
http://www.green-trust.org/2000/biofuel/batesmethane.htm
http://www.truehealth.org/methane.html
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/methane-car-47011506
http://forums.scifi.com/index.php?showtopic=2297017
http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Methane_20Fuel_20Cell
This april story just changed the omega 3 from linseed to fish from the study below :
Martin C. et al : Journal of Animal Science. 2008 ; “Methane output and diet digestibility in response to feeding dairy cows crude linseed, extruded linseed,or linseed oil”.
“The last time I came into contact with frequent use of the word “deviant” as a pejorative was in a class on 1930s Soviet Union and Germany.”
The preferred Soviet term was “deviationist,” implying willful perversity and factionalism for its own sake.
James, you beat me to it. I thought the flame was coming from the wrong end. Maybe the picture should have been earth-destroying cow-dragons, like “Reign of Fire”, or something.
Sorry for posting this here as it is slightly OT, but I thought this is an interesting change.
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=1453831
Looks like NOAA has gone from wash to spin now.
Richard Treadgold (15:29:05) :
“How, exactly, does the fish oil “affect” the methane-producing bacteria in the rumen, “leading to reduced emissions,” and, especially, what other effects does it have?”
Components of the degradation of fish oils (the long chain fatty acids in the ‘oil chain’) are inhibitory specifically to methane producing bacteria. They hydrophobic molecules are thought to bind to or punch holes in the cell walls of the bacteria and prevents their normal energy generation. This is a well known problem in the waste treatment industry where fish wastes and other materials containing oils can be treated by anaerobic digestion to produce methane.
Gas will still be produced (belched by the cows) but will be higher in CO2 and lower in methane.
Fresh fish oils can be ‘deflavoured’ for addition to all sorts of food products:
http://www.ocean-nutrition.com/
This is available in a local premium milk brand. By the time I drink the milk the oils added to it have been halfway round the world from where the fish were caught, to where the oil was processed and deflavoured to where it is added to local milk. My point is that this particular oil does not have a small carbon footprint.
The Christian Science Monitor has a sense of humor, see
http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2009/04/01/scientists-worldwide-admit-global-warming-is-a-hoax/
n an unprecedented move Wednesday, the Norwegian Nobel Committee rescinded the Peace Prize it awarded in 2007 to former US vice president Al Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, amid overwhelming evidence that global warming is an elaborate hoax cooked up by Mr. Gore.
…
The only major scientific body not to sign the statement was the Royal Society of Canada, whose country has been brought to a standstill by a massive infestation of polar bears.