Millionaire Jeffrey Bezos also invests on the planet – and makes scientists closer to having a good solution to waging methane gas production.
Cattle is responsible for one third of methane production, a gas responsible for 30% of climate change worldwide.
Cows can even be “cute” animals, but what is not pleasant is when they belch and throw flatulence that concentrate a high degree of methane. Episodes of “collective pins” have even taken the in stables.
It is to wage these harmful “tracks” that the founding of Jeffrey Bezos (the owner of Amazon), Bezos Earth Fund, will contribute about 9 million euros for the elaboration of a vaccine against the gases of the cows.
“There has been one in different countries in an attempt to develop this unusual vaccine, as it is not necessarily for the benefit of the animal, but for the BENEFIT OF EMISSIONS that the animal can produce, ”he explains to John Hammondone of the investigators of this solution.
“To function, the vaccine would have to produce antibodies that would be bold to the bacteria of the rumen (Zone of the stomach of cows where methane is produced) that produce methane and prevent them from doing it, ”explains the scientist.
Problems: Identifying antibodies is difficult, and ensuring animal welfare is also a concern.
However, “if we are able to identify an appropriate vaccine approach, this can also mean that we can potentially vaccinate the mother cow,” says another project collaborator, Dirk Werling.
“This would result in the production of antibodies transmitted through do colostrum (the first milk produced after delivery). Therefore, there are several ways to use the cow’s own defenses, but all this is yet to be seen, ”he adds.
And there are still those who support other solutions, such as, which could drastically reduce methane, Pu even the Bovasa nitrate -based food additive that does not contain bromoform that has already been tested in cows.
But there is a big problem to fight: the disinformation. “We are not prepared for it,” says the scientist Joseph McFadden. “I see investment in science to get technology, but I see no investment in reflecting on how these things, when they get to the market, will be accepted by the consumer.”
“I feel that since the pandemic, all subjects are discussed only as black or white, so regardless of what we find, there will always be someone who will criticize us and someone who will applaud us,” he says, but “in the end, if the work that we are making help in impact of global warming, This, for me, is a job well done. ”
