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Cows contribute to global warming!

14/Oct/2006: This may sound a bit ridiculous, but cows, are the UK’s largest source of methane - a greenhouse gas, more potent than carbon dioxide. Scientists have found that, the cow’s burping, which releases methane, contributes to global warming. Each cow and bull can produce around 500 liters of methane a day, according to a new research conducted in UK, which also showed that cattle account for nearly 3% of the greenhouse gas emission in United Kingdom.

Methane concentration in the atmosphere has been increasing steadily over the last few centuries and it accounts for 20% of the total ‘radiative forcing’ from all the greenhouse gases. Radiation forcing refers to the change in the radiation entering or leaving the climate system.

Professor David Beever, an expert on nutrition with the feed producer Richard Keenan and Co., said that grazing is one of the main reasons, which contributes to the formation of methane in cows. He added that, since cow’s food is not easily chewable, it gets to their rumen (a large chamber in the cow’s stomach containing microorganisms that break down plant cellulose in the food and return the food to the mouth as cud, for additional chewing) first and in the process produces methane.

Scientists in UK are now trying to find a solution to this problem. Cutting the fodder or grass in to small pieces, before feeding them to cows or adding garlic to the cow’s food to cut the release of methane, are a few options that scientists are pondering upon, to tackle this unusual problem. Beever said that, any such solutions could only reduce the amount of methane released from cows and cannot eliminate it completely.

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