Researchers are constantly looking for ways to reduce the amount of methane produced by dairy and beef cows and make the dairy industry more sustainable. One way to do that is to make their feed easier to digest, but finding affordable and nutritious supplements is no easy feat.
Luckily, the digestive systems of cattle are so potent that they can consume almost anything that is included in their ration, and researchers are taking advantage of this fact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by feeding them seaweed.
Frank Mitloehner and Ermias Kebreab, along with other professors and scientists at UC Davis, performed a trial by including Asparagopsis taxiformis, a red type of seaweed.
In the trial, they found that "there is up to a 60 percent reduction in methane emissions by using 1 percent of seaweed in the diet," Kebreab said. "This is a very surprising and promising development."
Not only does this seaweed supplement reduce methane output, but it also has no effect on the taste of the milk. The only downside that UC Davis researchers found with the red seaweed is the fact that a wild harvest would yield sufficient supply for widespread adoption. Luckily, there is a company that is replicating and stabilizing nature's anti-methanogenic compound, turning it into scalable and highly effective supplements.
Red Seaweed in the ocean
California Dairy Trial
In the fall of 2021, Straus Family Creamery in Marin County, California, received approval from regulatory agencies to conduct a trial of a new seaweed-derived supplement called Brominata. In the trial, they found that the supplement proved effective, showing an average of a 52 percent reduction in methane emissions on the Straus dairy farm.
Brominata is a 100% natural digestive aid that helps cows derive more nutritional value, especially energy, from their feed. The supplement is made from a whole plant with nothing added and nothing taken away. Blue Ocean Barns’s San Diego facilities are USDA Certified Organic and is Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) by the California Department of Food and Agriculture.
Brominata is grown in a land-based cultivation system in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, at a company called Blue Ocean Barns. The company claims that by the end of this decade, we will be growing enough of our seaweed to supplement all 100 million cattle in the US, all on a plot of land that is smaller than Chicago’s O’Hare airport.
“Nobody knows how long it’s going to take,” said Ermias Kebreab, a University of California, Davis researcher and chair of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Technical Working Group on Feed Additives. “We are a long way away from that at the moment.”
About Blue Ocean Barns
Blue Ocean Barns is a public benefit corporation that is committed to reducing the climate impact of livestock agriculture. We work with dairy and beef producers to remove greenhouse gas emissions directly from their supply chains so they can meet their ambitious science-based climate goals.
Blue Ocean Barns is the world leader in Asparagopsis production and science, owing to the knowledge and skill of our team members, both internal and external. The company’s esteemed science advisors include Dr. Jennifer Smith, an expert on Asparagopsis taxiformis and Professor of Marine Ecology and Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD, and Dr. Ermias Kebreab, Associate Dean, Professor, and Sesnon Endowed Chair at the UC Davis College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences.
