By now, many beef and dairy cattle producers have heard of Bovaer, the methane-reducing cattle supplement recently greenlit for use in Canada.
It’s being heralded as a tool to help those industries achieve their greenhouse gas reduction goals. But is Bovaer safe for animals and the humans that consume their products? A retired researcher gives her thumbs-up on both counts.
“We did a lot of research in Canada and it’s been studied in different production systems around the world,” said Karen Beauchemin, who worked for the AAFC Lethbridge Research and Development Centre, the first centre to research the active compound in Bovaer.
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“It’s been deemed by a number of countries to be safe. There’s lots of scientific evidence that it works. So I’m really happy to see it finally be approved.”
That active compound called 3-Nitrooxypropanol, or 3NOP, limits greenhouse gases from methane emissions by controlling cattle burps. Its safety is ensured by degrading into metabolites (substances produced during metabolism) that are already present in the rumen, said Beauchemin.
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“There’s absolutely no carryover. There’s been a number of toxicology and safety studies. Those studies have been published and it’s been deemed to be completely safe.”
Its approval in 58 countries to date also speaks to its safety, she said.
“It’s not an antibiotic, it’s not a hormone, it doesn’t have the same risk factors that some other compounds have.”
If Beauchemin has any misgivings about methane reduction, it’s that scientists don’t know its long-term, multigenerational effects.
“It’s not so much about 3NOP. If you reduce methane by 30 or 40 per cent for several years in a row, we don’t know those long-term effects.”
Bovaer comes in a powder form that is mixed with feed at around one to 1.5 grams per cow per day. According to dsm-firmenich (DSM), the Switzerland-based producers of Bovaer, cattle feeders can reduce methane emissions by an average of 45 per cent by using the ingredient. In the case of dairy cows, Bovaer can “reduce methane emissions by 30 per cent on average, potentially lowering the overall greenhouse gas footprint per litre of milk by 10 to 15 per cent.”
According to Mark van Nieuwland, president of Bovaer under DSM, feed supplemented with Bovaer enters the rumen where it’s broken down, in the process generating hydrogen and carbon. These are converted into methane by a group of micro-organisms called methanogens.
“Bovaer interacts with this enzymatic process and temporarily inhibits its activity,” said van Nieuwland. “As part of the inactivation, Bovaer is broken down into natural compounds which are already present and processed by the cow’s normal digestive and metabolic processes.”
Its effects work for about six hours. 3NOP, and by extension Bovaer, can only work in ruminants because they have the digestive capacity for it, said Beauchemin.
“If you reduce methane emissions, there has to be another ‘sink’ that will wrap up that hydrogen. In the rumen there’s a number of different ways that hydrogen can go,” she said.
3NOP is an “inhibitory compound,” which assures its safety to the animal.
“It doesn’t kill the organisms in the rumen. It just interferes with that last step in the biochemical pathway by which methane is formed in the rumen.”
Beauchemin discovered in her 3NOP research that it always works as a methane inhibitor. However, the extent to which it works depends on the dose and the diet.
“If you have a high fibre diet, you get less of a reduction in methane. If you have a high grain diet, you get more of a reduction,” she said.
“For example, in our feedlot with animals that are fed a very high grain diet, we see a 40 to 80 per cent reduction in methane. In a backgrounding diet where we have a lot of silage being fed, a lot of fibre, then it’s anywhere between 20 and 40 per cent depending on the diet and the dose.”
van Nieuwland said high fibre diets have a higher initial methane footprint than grain.
“If you look at absolute reductions they’re actually quite comparable,” he said. “What matters at the end of the day is how many times can we reduce absolute (methane) and there I would say (the two diets) work quite similar.”
One weakness of 3NOP, at least for now, is that it isn’t designed for cows in all feeding situations, said Beauchemin.
“If it’s a grazing animal where you’re not feeding a diet, you can’t use 3NOP (because) it only works when it’s incorporated into the diet, which doesn’t represent all of our animals,” she said. “We need a whole bunch of different strategies to reduce methane in a comprehensive method around all different types of production systems. Feeding 3NOP is only part of the equation.”
DSM is already on the case, said van Nieuwland.
“We have already demonstrated that it works when cows eat grass only. We are currently working on forms that could also be effective in a pasture situation.”
Beauchemin is hoping 3NOP-based methane inhibition doesn’t become the be-all and end-all of how the beef and dairy industries target methane. Another possibility in the future is to selectively breed for low-emitting cattle.
“Geneticists are saying this is a heritable trait. There are a number of studies that show that it is a heritable characteristic. So can we actually put methane into our selection index so that when we select sires, we have low emitting cattle?
“For example, if you take 100 animals and they’re all basically from the same genetic origins, they’re all the same body weight, and they are all treated the same and eat the same, etc., you can measure about a 30 per cent difference between the high emitter and the low emitter.”
The possibilities don’t end there.
“Low methane vaccines are a technically challenging problem, but I think we’re going to see them within 10 years,” said Beauchemin in a Jan. 30 Manitoba Co-operator story.
Then there’s seaweed. Some forms of seaweed and algae have shown potential to reduce methane emissions in ruminant animals, said Beauchemin. But those solutions come with their own set of problems. Scraping seaweed from the ocean is expensive and growing it in tanks has a considerable carbon footprint.
Also, one of the leading algaes with methane-inhibiting potential has a questionable element. Studies have shown that red sea plume can reduce methane in the rumen by
90 per cent. However, its active component, bromoform, is classified as a probable human carcinogen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
But there’s hope beyond red algae. Beauchemin has been researching the efficacy of red, brown and green seaweeds.
“What we’ve found so far is that some of them could have a small effect. We’re looking at maybe 10 or 20 per cent production mitigation,” she said in April 2023. “There may be some opportunities for other seaweeds that have bioactive components other than bromoform.”
