New research by scientists at University of California, Davis (UC Davis), has found that giving grazing cattle a seaweed supplement reduces their methane emissions by nearly 40 percent without having an effect on their health or weight.
It is the first study to examine seaweed’s methane-reduction potential on grazing beef cattle, a press release from UC Davis said. Earlier studies had shown that seaweed could slash methane emissions by more than half in dairy cows and by 82 percent in feedlot cattle.
“Beef cattle spend only about three months in feedlots and spend most of their lives grazing on pasture and producing methane,” said the study’s senior author Ermias Kebreab, a professor in the Department of Animal Science at UC Davis, in the press release. “We need to make this seaweed additive or any feed additive more accessible to grazing cattle to make cattle farming more sustainable while meeting the global …