Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Inhibitor can solve methane issue

Neal Wallace
News the world’s first methane inhibitor for livestock will be released in New Zealand later this year has been greeted by scientists as evidence technology can solve our greenhouse gas problem.
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Dutch company DSM has developed 3-NOP, a feed additive that inhibits a methane producing micro-organism in the rumen, reducing emissions by about 30% while also being safe for animals and consumers.

However, the effet stops within a few hours of feeding so it must be ingested regularly.

DSM’s clean cow programme director Mark van Nieuwland said the product’s initial format is as a powder designed for indoor dairy operations but it is starting work developing a slow release pellet for use in New Zealand’s pasture-based dairy system.

While not releasing costings van Nieuwland says the inhibitor can be easily made at scale so there will be economic benefits for users.

NZ’s Pastoral Greenhouse Gas Research Consortium manager Mark Aspin said the commercial development of a methane inhibitor is a boost for science but also confirms such developments take time.

DSM has taken more than eight years to get to commercial release.

“What has been useful has been the advance in science on methane,” Aspin says.

“It’s a mechanism whereby we can use it to understand what happens when you reduce methane in a ruminant animal.”

Developing the product to apply to pasture will be a challenge and still must satisfy regulatory requirements.

“It shows it is possible. I have no idea about the economics but this is absolutely an emerging field that we’re all learning from.”

Methane from livestock generates about a third of NZ’s greenhouse gases though it is short-lived, breaking down in the atmosphere in about 12 years compared to carbon dioxide, which takes about 100 years.

Methane emissions are quite stable with Landcare Research calculating NZ emissions increased 5% from 1990 to 2015.

Van Nieuwland says it is lodging a product registration application in NZ in the next few weeks and will follow with a registration application in the European Union. It has already started the process in the United States.

He hopes to have NZ approval by the end of the year but developing a slow-release pellet will take a bit longer, a process DSM is doing with partners in the NZ dairy sector.

The aim is to produce a pellet animals digest once or twice a day from a feed trough in a paddock or dairy shed feeding system. Spraying it on pasture would lead to waste.

“If they go once or twice a day to get a feed, that will be sufficient.”

He says the volume of 3-NOP to be digested is very small, about quarter of a teaspoon added to feed, and the company is confident a slow-release version will produce the same methane reducing results but that will be the focus of NZ trails that will also look at mechanisms and practices.

The safety and efficacy work of 3-NOP has already been done.

During digestion, microbes in the stomach help process food but 3-NOP blocks an enzyme responsible for methane fermentation.

Trials and research have been done in Canada, the US, Brazil, NZ, Australia and Europe.

“Each time it has worked.”

Comparable results have been achieved in beef cattle, sheep and goats but van Nieuwland says the initial focus is on dairy cows.

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