Can We Grow Enough Seaweed to Help Cows Fight Climate Change?
Research suggests that adding red seaweed to cattle feed makes then burp 60 percent less. Now, some scientists are seeking to do it at scale.
Over the past few months, graduate students and researchers at California’s Moss Landing Marine Laboratories have scoured coastal waters, collecting seaweed in the hopes of finding a native species that could help gassy cows.
Cows belch—a lot. And their burps (as well as those of other ruminants) make them the top polluters of methane, a greenhouse gas that is 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. As pressure to reduce heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere mounts, an increasing body of research has shown that seaweed added to cattle feed could dramatically reduce livestock’s impact.
The…
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Exposing the Big Game 
We seem to have more airplane crashes. Can’t we just solve the problem by making more parachutes?
One might think that shortening the food chain would be a more effective strategy than adding another link. Then, this Mouse wonders whether this is about saving our atmosphere from further degradation, or just another profit-seeking venture in climate-clothing: “it’s also a nascent industry;” “In order to get the industry to take this on, it should not affect their bottom line.” A big concern, not touched on in the article, is how we are going to price out the public oceans growing leases so as to let the taxpayer carry the additional burden of impacts, compensate farmers for lost profits due to native ocean life messing with their crops, and whether USDA Wildlife Services will be the agency of choice to remove all sea-life from the vicinity to make sea-farming safe? We will also need to strengthen our Ag-gag laws to prevent people from taking so-called seascape photos that might reveal less than sterling aquaculture practices. Beach-water sampling procedures for coliform bacteria and other bacterias and viruses must be rewritten to ensure that nothing points to the seaweed farms. Probably, it’s best to just prohibit water-sampling within 25 miles up-current and 100 miles down-current from any save-the-environment profit-making ocean ag operation.
Yeah, count me in. This is a great way to keep meat and dairy cows from extirpation.
Sure.
You got it. Anything but change our lifestyles. Then genetically engineer the seaweed to grow faster so we can use more of it. Just look as fish farming to see the mess made. Just ridiculously grasping at straws.
Yep.
Also, I wonder if it will make the meat taste differently. There really is no magic cure, except to eat less/give up meat eating, and reproduce ourselves less.
That’s the ticket.