Is Banning the Burps of Bullocks Worth Risking Our Bollocks?

Written by Ben pile on December 4, 2024. Posted in Current News

Cattle have long been accused of being among the top enemies of the climate.

Despite the fact that creatures resembling our favourite Sunday dinners have been roaming the surface of the planet in their countless numbers for millions of years, climate warriors cannot distinguish between a cow, a car and a coal-fired power plant.

Eating beef is destroying the planet, they claim. Some have demanded that livestock farming be abolished altogether and that governments intervene to force us into veganism by legislation. Others think that we can be ‘nudged’ into lentil-eating by re-branding it as a ‘plant-based lifestyle’.

At the softer end of climate wars, however, are the innovators, who claim to have found a way to stop cows burping and farting ‘planet-destroying’ gases. The problem for them is that people aren’t buying that claim.

This week, Arla Foods U.K. announced a trial of dairy cow feed additive Bovaer. The additive is marketed by dsm-firmenich – a decapitalised “purpose-led company”, which despite DSM starting out as a coal firm, now claims to be a supplier of “science-based products, services and groundbreaking innovation fundamental to the health, well-being and sustainability of farm animals”.

The trial will see milk produced from cows fed with Bovaer being sold in Morrisons, Tesco and Aldi supermarkets. According to Arla, the additive “can reduce emissions from cows by 27%” – which amounts to about a tonne of methane per cow per year.

According to dsm-firmenich, Bovaer has been subject to “100-plus on-farms trials in 20-plus countries and more than 70 peer-reviewed scientific studies”. It was licensed for use by the EU in early 2022, and by the USA’s FDA in May this year. And it works by suppressing the production of the enzymes in the cow’s digestive system that help to produce methane.

The internet’s many and able sceptics were quick to wonder out loud what the ingredients of this additive – silicon dioxide, propylene glycol, and 3-nitrooxypropanol – are, and what effects they have on cows, and potentially our own bodies.

The later component, known as ‘3-NOP’, turns out to affect the development of male reproductive organs of rats in experiments using relatively high doses compared to the recommended usage.

This effect seems not to have troubled regulators, who have since authorised its use. So it must be assumed that they deem it safe.

However, the word ‘safe’ in the context of interventions that are intended to serve the greater good has become much weaker in recent years, along side its sister term, ‘effective’. Effective it may well be. But many do not think the risk of this having effects on humans has been excluded.

I am the last to argue for organic farming. I often bang heads with farmers who, though are broadly critical of Net Zero, seem to have nonetheless drunk a lot more green Kool-Aid than is good for them.

And I have argued against the broader green trend in favour of GM technology and in defence of agricultural chemicals – fertiliser, pesticides, and fungicides. I argue we should not be squeamish about either our use of animals or technologies, and resist claims that mischaracterise ‘nature’.

But such arguments are not claims that there exist no risks – it is that technologies produce very clear and important benefits. By some estimates, for example, half the entire human population of the world is dependent on synthetic fertiliser (manufactured from methane) for sustenance.

What is the benefit achieved by preventing cow burps? Some claim that it will help save the planet. But that claim seems far-fetched when we consider the counter claims that the world does not need saving anyway, that methane’s mode of action in the atmosphere is not well understood and has been overstated, that the atmosphere may already be saturated by methane, and that the action of hooves on the surface of the planet may well aid in the sequestration of greenhouse gases.

We might therefore want to consider whether banning the burps of bullocks is worth risking our bollocks. Do we even need safety data to dissuade us from this pointless intervention?

Even if we trusted the agencies responsible for ensuring the safety of foods and food technologies, are there sufficient benefits to offset the possibility that they have made an error?

No, because there are no benefits to this product. In other words, Bovaer meets political ‘needs’. It’s a food additive that ticks policy boxes.

In response to Arla Foods announcement, some are now challenging the supermarkets involved in this trial and advising a boycott. Others are contacting the dairies they use, to check that their milk or milk products have not come from a farm involved in this trial.

And some farms have been keen to point out that they will not be using this additive. Some are calling for labelling, reigniting the tropes of the wars over GM food and throwing the green arguments back to the greens.

And some are sharing the details of farms where it is possible to buy unprocessed milk, produced to the highest standards, with the minimum chemical and process interference.

I can’t say I blame them.

And I think I will be suspending my scepticism of the ‘nature knows best’ crowd to join them in resisting this completely unnecessary chemical intervention, whether or not it is functionally equivalent to castration.

It will be the greenest thing I have done in my enter career as a climate sceptic.

See more here Daily Sceptic 

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