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Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers

journals.plos.org

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Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers

#4
This is like improving ICEs to enable their continued existence. To what end?

How about eliminating meat ag altogether since it's a waste of resources, a significant component of man-made climate change, a pandemic risk, a major source of pollution, driver of deforestation, and poses a threat to antibiotic resistance? But no, the typical rationalizations include: "Muh cheezburger is muh freedom. I can eat whatever I want. Where you gonna get protein, you pushy vegan weirdo, lettuce? Vegetables cost too much."

Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers

#5

This is like improving ICEs to enable their continued existence. To what end? How about eliminating meat ag altogether since it's a waste of resources, a significant component of man-made climate change, a pandemic risk, a major source of pollution, driver of deforestation, and poses a threat to antibiotic resistance? But no, the typical rationalizations include: "Muh cheezburger is muh freedom. I can eat whatever I…

The devil is in the details, like: how do you get it done?

Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers

#6
I guess everything helps, but we put so much effort into the problems with easy solutions, that could be invested into the difficult stuff.

Livestock contributes to 15% of all greenhouse gasses. But the solution is easy, cheap, and only midly inconvenient. Going vegan.

This has the added benefit of protecting threatened ecosystems in the rainforrest and seas.

We could then spend that energy on the difficult stuff. Fast tracked rollout of renevables and interrim energy storage.

Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers

#7

This is like improving ICEs to enable their continued existence. To what end? How about eliminating meat ag altogether since it's a waste of resources, a significant component of man-made climate change, a pandemic risk, a major source of pollution, driver of deforestation, and poses a threat to antibiotic resistance? But no, the typical rationalizations include: "Muh cheezburger is muh freedom. I can eat whatever I…

What if you: feed them algae, don't deforest, and don't give them antibiotics unless absolutely necessary?

Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers

#8
post #2

The active ingredient is bromoform, which might even be cheaper to dose than the raw algae.

Is this what’s new about it? I thought this finding was already known?

I'm not sure what's new here. All of this has been known at least 5 years.

Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers

#9

This is like improving ICEs to enable their continued existence. To what end? How about eliminating meat ag altogether since it's a waste of resources, a significant component of man-made climate change, a pandemic risk, a major source of pollution, driver of deforestation, and poses a threat to antibiotic resistance? But no, the typical rationalizations include: "Muh cheezburger is muh freedom. I can eat whatever I…

I 100% agree.

Even after the swine flu, bird flu, SARS, MERS, covid, HIV and other viruses, we are still keeping animals in confined spaces, butchering them and selling their meat on markets so we can consume parts of their dead bodies, hurting our planet and ourselves in the process.

It's a grim side of humanity.

edit: prions too, not just viruses.

Re: Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers

#10
post #2

The active ingredient is bromoform, which might even be cheaper to dose than the raw algae.

Is this what’s new about it? I thought this finding was already known?

The nature of science is that experiments are repeated many times with slight variations before we consider that something is known.

This paper does add details I hadn't seen before - it shows that adding algae to the diet increases the efficiency of converting feed to body mass, and reduces feed intake. There was reason to believe that would happen, but I'm not sure it had been demonstrated experimentally.

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