Farm View: Could GM fodder be the answer to livestock emissions?
Elysia are initially focused on maize, of which an average US cow eats up to 2.5t every year.
The controversy over whether to slow climate change by turning to nuclear power for low-carbon electricity and heat may soon be matched by disagreements over feeding genetically modified plants to livestock to stop their methane emissions.
In countries where genetic modification of crops is allowed, scientists and their companies are well on the way to "biosynthesising" methane-busting chemicals into feed crops.
One of the leading entrepreneurs in this area is Elysia Creative Biology in North Carolina in the US. Elysia has developed a proprietary technology for reducing methane emissions from cows and other ruminants.
"Specifically, we create crops that can biosynthesise a chemical found in seaweed called bromoform, which reduces methane by 98% when incorporated into ruminant diets", said Eli Hornstein, Elysia’s founder and chief executive.
Elysia are initially focused on maize, of which an average US cow eats up to 2.5t every year.
The breakthrough could solve all their methane worries for the 2,000 or so US dairy farms that have more than 1,000 head of cattle each. Crops from the modified Elysia maize seed would go to feed mills, which in turn sell animal feed to dairy farmers. The farmers wouldn't have to change their current practices or buy new equipment.
Chemicals like bromoform are already available commercially in feed additives to control methane emissions, but farmers feeding Elysia maize to their herds wouldn’t have to buy them and carefully measure out the right amount of feed additive and add it every day to cow diets.
An additive engineered into the feed is a much more attractive proposition than, for example, getting bromoform from rare and hard-to-grow seaweeds and putting it in an additive fed separately.
Elysia is just one of many companies worldwide striving to find new technologies to control the methane emissions from enteric fermentation in 200 ruminant species (including cattle, goats, sheep, giraffes, deer, gazelles, and antelopes).
They are estimated to be a greenhouse gas source larger than shipping, air travel, and deforestation combined.
Farm animals are the world's largest source of methane, which they produce when they digest food.
There's a race worldwide to come up with the best tech solution. the best products found could literally sell themselves, because many countries, including the US, have multi-billion dollar carbon credit programmes which pay farmers for lowering their carbon footprint.
Elysia was one of the companies pitching their methane solution to investors at the recent Animal AgTech Innovation Summit in San Francisco.
They say adoption of their genetically modified cattle feed could avoid 0.3 degrees of global warming over the next two decades.
But their tech solution is certain to be widely opposed in the EU, where only two genetically modified (GM) crops were ever allowed (one maize and one starch potato). Less than 90,000 hectares of these are grown.
However, 85 to 90% of compound animal feeds in the EU and up to 95% of soybean feed imports are labelled as GM. This is allowed because independent scientific studies show no difference in how GM and non-GM feeds affect animal health and safety. The DNA in the GM feed does not transfer to the animal that eats it.
In contrast, the US is a leader in GM technology. Although most GM crops are used for animal feed, many are also used to make ingredients that Americans eat, such as cornstarch, corn syrup, corn oil, soybean oil, canola oil, or granulated sugar.
Countries like the US also widely use GM to create, for example, medicines such as human insulin. Plants are also being engineered to produce therapeutic proteins and vaccines.
Types of genetic modification are also employed in another climate-friendly new technology, the creation of cultivated meat.
