Methane misinformation

Hi there,

Welcome to the fourteenth edition of The Overview: A dispatch on the world of methane and other super pollutants.

Today, we’ll explore recent misinformation that has been circulating on the internet regarding the safety of Bovaer®, a feed additive designed to reduce methane emissions from livestock. This misinformation poses a significant risk to the burgeoning yet nascent market of enteric methane mitigation solutions.

The top line

Earlier this month, social media users in the U.K. started documenting their participation in a rather strange viral trend. Rather than a dance routine, they filmed themselves pouring milk down their sinks and toilets. 

The protest was a response to a recent initiative launched by Arla Foods Group, a Danish and Swedish Co-op owned by thousands of dairy farmers. In late November, Arla announced it would begin trials of a new feed additive for its dairy cows on 30 farms across Britain. The feed additive in question is Bovaer®, a product designed to reduce methane emissions from cattle that was developed by the Dutch nutritional bioscience company Royal DSM that has been approved for commercial use in 65 countries, including in the U.K. in late 2023 and more recently in the U.S.

Entering 2025, we need to add proactively combating methane misinformation to the litany of challenges inherent to accelerating methane emission mitigation efforts and creating viable business models and policies to support them. So, let’s explore how we got here, and how we stay proactive rather than reactive.

More information + science = more milk!

Since the domestication of cattle began more than 10,000 years ago (based on DNA evidence found in present-day Iran), humans have selectively bred them for desirable traits, in part for docility, but above all else for their meat and milk production. In high-income countries with sophisticated breeding operations and access to the best in genetic technology, selective breeding, nutrition, animal science research and data, and AI (we mean AI in two ways, both artificial insemination and artificial intelligence), we’ve found ways to make cattle more and more productive.

For perspective on how much of an impact these efforts make, consider that dairy cows in the U.S. today produce ~33% more milk than they did at the turn of the century. Further, as per the Council on Dairy Cattle Breeding, “Since 1960, the average milk produced per year has risen from about 13,000 to 28,000 pounds of milk, per U.S. Holstein in DHI herds.”

As in other areas of technological innovation, more information and data, more powerful computational capacity to process it, and sound science can drive beneficial outcomes in industries like livestock management and foundational processes like how the world produces meat and milk. That said, farmers in developing nations like India—the world’s largest milk producer and home to more than 300 million cows—do not always have access to the innovations that farmers in the U.S. enjoy and employ.

When farmers lack access to sophisticated breeding techniques, prime genetics, feed, and other innovations, their cows likely feature lower ‘efficiency.’ This means animals either need to live longer to produce the same amount of food products or that the size of cattle herds has to grow to keep up with growing demand. All of which leads to more cows across the world, more methane emissions, and more global warming.

How we got here: Addressing ruminant methane emissions

While the efficiency of meat and milk production in cattle improves, one central challenge with ruminant livestock hasn’t gone away. Specifically, cows and other ruminants like goats and sheep produce and burp out a lot of methane! As the global human population grows and demand for products from ruminants does in parallel, so do cattle and other ruminant herds. There are now more than 1.46 billion cattle on Earth, 1.19 billion sheep, 200 million buffalo, and 1 billion goats worldwide.

Cows, in particular, are uniquely great at making meat, milk, and methane. A single cow can produce between 154 to 264 pounds of methane per year. Multiply that by billions of cows across the globe and you get a total methane emissions contribution from cows and other ruminant livestock that comprises more than 10% of all global greenhouse gas emissions. (Note: Specific percentages here can vary considerably for several reasons—more on that here). However, the fact that the 10% figure is on the lower end of estimates hits home the scale and impact that methane emissions from ruminant livestock have on global warming, climate change, and the world as a whole.

Fortunately, in parallel to how many researchers and scientists work to improve the efficiency of ruminant milk and meat production, others have been hard at work for decades to find solutions to reduce methane production in ruminants and, thereby, the climate and global warming impact of global livestock operations. Methane—as we routinely discuss—is a powerful driver of global warming over the short term. Since the Industrial Revolution, it has driven more than 25% of observed global warming. It is more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide at driving warming over a 20-year timespan. Given its potency, reducing methane emissions, including by reducing how much methane cattle emit, would be a great way to slow global warming quickly.

To accomplish this, feed additives that inhibit methane production in cattle are coming to market. Bovaer®, the methane-inhibitive feed additive for livestock developed by the Royal DSM we’ve started discussing, was tested extensively for a decade across 45 on-farm trials in 13 countries before it was approved for commercial use in Brazil, Chile, and many other countries including the U.S. The FDA approved it for use in the U.S. in May of this year, making it the first methane-focused feed additive approved for use in the U.S. in general. Importantly, large companies, like Tesco in the U.K., have started testing Bovaer® on small scales with their suppliers. Further, many other feed additives, as well as different solutions like vaccines, are in research and development stages or early-stage trials on farms. If they work and scale, the methane reduction opportunity is huge.

Enter the misinformation

Today, our access to information and our ability to make use of it and share it liberally is unparalleled. However, not everyone is necessarily inclined to use those powers towards productive ends. Insofar as free information flow can drive improvements in things like livestock production efficiency and farming operations, the same platforms that democratize information and facilitate its dissemination also make it easy for disinformation, or, at the minimum, misinformation, to spread.

As farmers and other players in the beef and dairy supply chains begin to use and publicize their use of Bovaer®, questions about the product’s safety have quickly become the epicenter of dramatic and often vitriol-laden backlash on the internet. A viral thread on Twitter, née, X, with more than 6.9 million views, opened by claiming that the use of Bovaer® is based on “woke science,” which gives you a sense of the tenor of the arguments it made. We won’t link the thread so as not to promote it more.

More pertinent and specific concerns focus on the active ingredient in Bovaer®, namely 3-nitrooxypropanol (3-NOP), a synthetic compound, and whether traces of 3-NOP or derivative acids could make their way from the cows to which Bovaer® are administered into meat or milk products. Of course, the safety of products like Bovaer® and the potential toxicity that 3-NOP could pose to animals or trace amounts in food products could pose to humans are fair causes for concern. However, studying these things is why institutions like the FDA exist. There’s a reason most products never make it through FDA trials; it’s a highly rigorous process specifically designed to protect health above all.

Regardless, concerns and misinformation about the safety of Bovaer® went viral quickly, receiving significantly more attention than any news about things like the FDA’s approval of Bovaer® did in the first place.

Retailers and food companies that recently announced Bovaer® trials—who likely hoped their announcements would be a net positive for PR—had to scramble to issue statements and defenses against consumer concerns, boycotts, and outright conspiracy theories. In response to the social media backlash we discussed in the opening of this newsletter, within a week of announcing its Bovaer® trials, Arla found itself issuing press releases and battling misinformation and boycotts. 

Meanwhile, opportunistic (and unhelpful) operations were quick to capitalize on the moment to note they don’t use Bovaer®, even as they likely weren’t even invited to.

This is hardly the first time products administered to cattle have come under scrutiny for potential impacts on human and animal health. Recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST), a synthetic version of bovine growth hormone often administered to dairy cattle to boost milk production, has long been the subject of significant controversy. Even as products like these have helped dairy farmers stay afloat in a deeply challenged industry by improving operational efficiency, this past example offers little insight into how to mitigate misinformation, given controversies about rBST continue to this day.

The “meat” of the problem is that it’s hard to see a path back to a world in which these debates—especially when they devolve into conspiracy theories about whether Bill Gates is out to depopulate the world—can be resolved or even approached rationally and reasonably. Misinformation is like a Pandora’s box. Once it’s open, it’s hard, if not impossible, to close it again. It seems unlikely there’s any amount of scientific evidence or additional testing that would convince some who are now skeptical of Bovaer® or loudly lambasting it to change their minds or engage in reasoned discussion. The people peddling misinformation are unlikely to engage in productive conversation, even if it were with top scientists or experts in animal husbandry.

As we are not experts in bovine science, we will not claim to speak with any authority on the safety science behind a product like Bovaer®. Nor would we ever tell anyone not to operate with a baseline level of skepticism around what goes into the food they eat and the products they consume. It’s very fair to question our food production system and all that goes into it, provided you do so in a circumspect, well-intentioned way.

But Bovaer® is one of probably hundreds or thousands of different feed additives (other examples include ones designed to increase nitrogen uptake), vaccines, and other supplements administered to cows globally every day. Newsflash: There’s so much else that goes into making meat and milk. Efforts to single out Bovaer® reek of cheap, opportunistic hacks to go viral (at best) or coordinated climate denial (at worst).

The bottom line

Misinformation is not a new phenomenon; its meteoric proliferation is a well-documented challenge inherent to and likely accelerating in the present moment. Still, it does feel strange, not to mention alarming, when it comes to a small corner of research and innovation—like methane mitigation in enteric fermentation—that’s so niche it barely receives any attention, let alone investment to begin with (methane mitigation efforts in general receive <2% of climate finance). Is any press always good press? In this case, probably not. Probably not at all.

As we enter 2025, we are still in the early stages of market development for methane-inhibiting products, strategies, and solutions. Besides Bovaer®, there are no other FDA-approved feed additives available in the U.S. (or in other major markets). Other solutions are still in the early stages of research, development, and small-scale trials and require substantially more funding and resource allocation. Suffice it to say, there are plenty of challenges inherent to scaling methane mitigation efforts as is.

The stakes are also very high. This category of climate solutions can significantly reduce global emissions, slow global warming quickly, create efficiency and cost savings for farmers who operate margin-constrained businesses, and even offer ethical benefits, as efficiency can reduce the number of animals reared in often inhumane environments while maintaining a consistent level of food production. Hence, we can’t let misinformation that capitalizes on fear diminish consumer trust in and commercialization of the solutions that, in reality, are among the best levers to slow global warming today. 

So, what’s to be done? To be honest, we’re short on sage answers. Unfortunately, it’s a lot easier to push misinformation than it is to develop, market, sell, and scale real solutions.

That said, we’d be remiss if we didn’t offer a few ideas and calls to action:

1. Step #1 is for all key stakeholders in methane mitigation to steel themselves against more misinformation in the future. Once it starts, it’ll keep coming.

2. Step #2 involves keeping up the work regardless, as all of us diligently working to reduce methane emissions and advance R&D tend to anyway, even if it has never been easy nor necessarily will any time soon.

3. Step #3 probably requires working together more closely on communication strategies. Here, we could offer heady-sounding suggestions like “public engagement!” and “industry collaboration!!” and “building trust through transparency!!!” Frankly, absent serious, specific, concerted, targeted efforts, those buzzwords typically just devolve into (more) hot air.

However, there are likely communications, such as emphasizing that methane-inhibiting feed additives can offer feed conversion efficiency benefits that help farmers that might move the needle. Reframing the conversation to communicate that products like Bovaer® are also designed to drive efficiency gains versus just focusing on “climate” could help. Highlighting that methane-inhibiting research has been conducted since at least the 1970s might help, too. This area of work has always been about business. Methane mitigation happens to be a co-benefit, even if it’s an amazing one.

If you have other ideas on how to combat methane misinformation—whether in this case or in general—we’re all ears and are eager to collaborate. Respond to this email if so.

Keep fighting the good fight!

— This newsletter is brought to you by Lauren Singer and Nick van Osdol