Do Cows Really Pollute As Much As Cars?

a lesser amount through flatulence. Statistics vary regarding exactly how much on average, as some experts say it's some one hundred to two hundred liters per day, while others say it's up to five hundred. In any case, that is a lot of methane, an amount comparable to the pollution produced by a car in a day. On a global scale, these methane emissions are about as much of a problem as emissions from the oil and gas industry at large,

and the problem is expected to increase. A demand for meat and milk is growing as the human population grows and as more populations around the world are becoming able to afford it. Methane is relatively short lived in our atmosphere. It only sticks around for about twelve years, as opposed to the hundreds or thousands that carbon dioxide can last, but methane's effects are much more powerful. Its contribution to global warming is about twenty eight times out of carbon

dioxide while it lasts. This is part of why some climate activists and scientists are urging people who have a choice in their diet to choose less beef so that the world will keep fewer cattle and decrease those emissions. But okay, let's talk about why cattle produces so much methane. Cows, goats, sheep, and several other animals belong to a class of creatures called ruminants. Ruminants have four stomachs, and they digest their food in those stomachs instead of intestines as humans do.

A ruminants eat food, regurgitate it as cud, and then chew and swallow it again. The stomachs are filled with bacteria and other microbes that aid in digestion, but those microbes also produce methane. The same process happens in humans too, albeit on a smaller scale. When we fart, we are in fact passing our microbes farts out. Life is wondrous, But okay, this became a problem with the development of

large scale agriculture. In the mid twentieth century, when farming became a big business for some companies, farms became consolidated into large enterprises with many thousands of animals across large acreage. Before then, grazing areas were filled with a variety of grasses and flowers that grew naturally, offering a diverse diet

for cows and other ruminants. However, in order to improve the efficiency of feeding livestock, many of these pastures became re seeded with perennial rye grass with the aid of art fertilizers. Perennial rye grass grows quickly and in huge quantities. The downside is that it lacks the nutritious content of other grasses and prevents more nutritious plants from growing. It's been called the fast food of grass. This simple diet allows many cows to be fed, but it inhibits digestion.

This is where the methane comes in. The difficult to digest grass ferments in the cow's stomachs, where it interacts with microbes and produces gas. Research into how to improve the situation has been going on for at least twenty years. There are lots of ideas out there, such as breeding and feeding beef cattles that they produce more meat, thus reducing the number of cattle needed to meat meat demand. This thing goes for improving milk production in dairy cows.

There are also efforts to alter cattle's diet so that they produce less gas in the first place. For example, a team of resecar in Germany created a pill to trap gas and a cow's rumen its first stomach and convert the methane into glucose. However, the pill requires a strict diet and structured feeding times, which don't lend themselves

well to grazing. Other experiments have tried supplements like garlic or garlic extracts, the idea being that garlic contains compounds that can kill off some of the microbes that produce methane. It works, though with variable amounts of success, and don't worry, it doesn't make their milk taste like garlic. A Seaweed is also under investigation as a dietary supplement. A one study out of UC Davis found that replacing just one percent of cattle's normal diet with seaweed led to a

sixty percent decrease in methane production. Of course, growing enough seaweed and getting cattle to eat it may prove difficult. Many researchers are investigating ways to alter what livestock eat and to mix the best of old cow pastures, diverse, naturally growing and nutrient rich grasses, and other plants with the best of the new, fast growing and resistant to

invasive species. One possibility is to increase the ability of beneficial, nutrient rich plants and flowers to grow alongside the fast growing grasses commonly used in pastures. Another branch of research focuses on plants that are high in tannins, which are believed to lower methane levels in ruminants and boost milk production, though excessively high levels are harmful to the animal's growth.

Yet another possibility exists in trapping the methane gas and using it as energy or selling it back to the electrical grid. Some farmers already extract methane from livestock waste, but that doesn't solve the bigger problem of belched methane. Harnessing that methane would mean trapping it in the air, which again isn't really conducive to letting cattle do what

they do best, which is wander and grays. It's a difficult problem, but people all over the planet are working to better understand cattle's digestive systems and make them better for the planet. Who knew cowbirds could cause so much excitement. Today's episode is based on the article do cow's pollute as much as cars? On HowStuffWorks dot com, written by Jacob Silverman. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang.

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