Horses do fart

but that does not kill the planet

Cowboys Jake and Hunter were mucking the stable. We were standing right outside, as Jake was putting some fresh hay onto the stack.

“Just making sure our horses are doing fine,” said Jake, “unlike the ones at Golden Diamonds.”

“What happened to their horses?” Hunter wanted to know.

“They’re in veterinary care, for all I know,” Jake replied. Hunter grew more and more bewildered as their conversation developed.

“All of them?”

“Yeah, kinda suspicious, ain’t it?”

“You know why they all got sick?”

“They just won another sustainability award, you know.”

“And that made them sick?”

“Not by itself, but they added anti-fart stuff to their hay and all their horses got bloated like balloons.”

“What nonsense?! And they still won the sustainability award after that?”

“Sure, ‘cause all it takes to win that is to show that your ranch produces less methane.”

“If that is true, then we don’t need a sustainability award over here.”

“Amen,” Jake concluded, “let’s just feed them our natural hay as always.”

Poor horses at Golden Diamonds … bloated like balloons, since they were fed “fart and belch blockers.” AI generated image.

Could this really be happening? Well, several countries, including Australia, Britain and the European Union, are incentivizing farmers and ranchers to add feed supplements to their ruminants’ diets, so as to reduce methane emissions. Several options for additives exist, but the most widespread, commercially available option is a chemical marketed as Bovaer. The story as described by agricultural government branches (for instance, Agriculture Victoria) is very straightforward: ruminants have digestive enzymes that produce methane, which they belch out. If we add a chemical to ruminant feed that inhibits that enzyme’s function, then they don’t belch as much. The chemical itself will be digested into “compounds already found in livestock and safely excreted.” So the message is that it is a win-win for all: emissions are reduced significantly at “no cost for humans and animals.” Is that so?

The universe is very good at maintaining equilibria. Disturbing natural processes can have side effects, possibly disastrous. We should therefore not run too fast and absolutely make sure that introduction of new agents in natural, biological systems does not generate massive collateral damage. So, let’s have a look where things stand in the case of Bovaer. The chemically active substance therein is 3-nitrooxypropanol, or 3-NOP.

Chemical Structure of the active ingredient in Bovaer, 3-Nitrooxypropanol.

3-NOP has meanwhile been approved as a feed additive by most Western countries, on the grounds that it digests in the animals’ rumina into compounds that also occur naturally in their milk and tissues. So, should we consider adding it by default to cattle feed?

Based on its potential to reduce methane emissions, some radical eco-activists are proposing to make Bovaer addition to cattle feed mandatory. On the opposite side of the spectrum, there is an increasing choir of more conservative activists who oppose 3-NOP addition to feed, using a wide spectrum of arguments. Some of them merely posit that there is no need to interfere with the natural digestion process. Yet others oppose 3-NOP for a variety of reasons, such as it being corrosive and skin irritating for humans and maybe carcinogenic for animals, or because of the absence of long term studies of dosing 3-NOP in both animals and humans.

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Which of these claims are true? At first, let’s dismiss the claims that the “corrosive” and “irritating” classifications would have a health impact after consumption. When Bovaer is added to feed, 3-NOP is present in diluted concentrations. One could, for instance, compare this to phosphoric acid: while I would not advise to immerse one’s bare hands into concentrated phosphoric acid, in its diluted form it is consumed by millions in Coca Cola. The “corrosive” and “irritating” labels are only relevant to those who have to handle it in its concentrated form, such as workers in 3-NOP manufacturing plants.

What really matters, is what happens to 3-NOP in the diluted formulation after consumption by ruminants. An extensive study reports the findings that led to 3-NOPs approval by the European Food Safety Authority. They investigated many safety aspects regarding 3-NOP, such as its digestive pathways, as well as if the chemical should be considered toxic, mutagenic, or carcinogenic. Results are presented from studies in rats, in ruminants’ stomach fluid, as well as in vivo in ruminants themselves. All by all, the results from those tests are reassuring.

At first, 3-NOP is not a very stable molecule and it readily reacts away, especially in the acidic, aqueous environment in the rumen. Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that 3-NOP was not detected at all in the in vivo studies, neither in milk, nor in any of the edible tissues. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t there, but it does mean that if it is present, it is so in very low quantities. More precisely, in quantities that are lower than the limit of quantification, ergo a few parts per billion (micrograms per kilo). Its metabolite 3-nitrooxypropionic acid (3-NOPA) could be detected in milk from one cow at 3.66 parts per million (milligram per kilogram), which may merit further investigation, but not in edible tissues. Beyond 3-NOPA, 3-NOP is mainly digested into carbon dioxide, 1,3-propanediol and nitrate ions, none of which are worrisome for eventual human consumption.

Regarding carcinogenicity, a two-year study in rats indicated an increase in mesenchymal intestinal tumors. Moreover, some concern was raised on toxicity for the testes based on experiments in rats. These concerns bear little to no relevance to human consumption of ruminant products, since the 3-NOP will have been digested away to undetectable levels.

Finally, lets address the concern that no long term studies exist on 3-NOP addition. Wikipedia will readily dismiss this claim based on the same EHSA paper mentioned here, but that publication only mentions three long-term chronicity studies in rats. Since both the indication of carcinogenicity and the conclusion of the absence of long-term nefarious effects were based on results for rats, who have a digestive system that strongly differs from the one found in ruminants, I would agree with critics that further research is needed to study the long term health effect in animals. Such experiments are meanwhile underway. At the same time, I do not see any clear red flags that would be a reason to call for an immediate halt to consumption of products from animals that have digested feed with the additive.

While I don’t see a reason for grave concern about pernicious health effects from consumption of meat or milk from ruminants that have been fed diluted 3-NOP, I do agree with critics that we should not interfere in natural digestive pathways if there is no reason to do that. So why are we having this discussion in the first place? Academic circles, particularly in the West, seem to have degraded to echo chambers committed to “the cause” (TM) and devoid of any debate. As witnessed in this UC Davis post, the answer to the question if we need to reduce cow belching is “Yes, yes and yes” (a very scientific way to put it), and we need to do so because of the inevitable (you guessed it!) “We’re all in it together.” Sure.

We may be “in it” together, but that statement merits the question what exactly it is that we are in together? Well, assuming that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have a destructive effect on climate, we should evaluate where to cut emissions. We should then target those economic sectors that have the largest impact. In the United States, the EPA’s annual report on “Greenhouse Gases Emissions and Sinks” could provide a good indication. Figure ES-8 therein plots methane emissions from the agriculture sector.

Methane emissions in the United States (2022) by source (source: EPA).

Indeed, enteric fermentation does show up as the largest bar. However, the same report can be referred to to put it in a different perspective. As soon as we focus on the totality of greenhouse gas emissions, enteric fermentation only shows up in the ninth spot.

Top 10 sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States (2022, source: EPA).

Per this report, in 2022, enteric fermentation in the US produced 192.6 MT of CO2-equivalent emissions, whereas the largest contributor, fossil fuel combustion, generated 4699.4 MT of CO2-equivalents. Therefore, enteric fermentation was only responsible for about four percent of emissions relative to the largest contributor. Already from that perspective, enteric fermentation does not seem to be an impactful lever if the target is to prevent an imminent climate emergency. The picture gets even worse, though, when we look at the global perspective. Climate is a phenomenon of planetary relevance. When China emits greenhouse gases, they don’t stay in the atmosphere above China. Wind, jetstream and other phenomena will distribute gases around the planet, so we should look at the global picture.

Greenhouse gas emissions by country (2020, source: Our World in Data), as well as greenhouse gas emissions from enteric fermentation as methane in the US (source: EPA).

In fact, from a global perspective, emissions from enteric fermentation in the US are dwarfed by other greenhouse gas emissions, both from domestic sources, and even more prominently so, from the world’s largest emitter: China. If enteric fermentation in the US is an insignificant contributor to global emissions, so is enteric fermentation in smaller countries, such as Australia, Britain, Canada, or New Zealand. Looking at the global picture, whatever measures any of these countries take to “mitigate” emissions from enteric fermentation, really cannot have a significant impact on global climate. While we may be in “it” together when there truly is a climate emergency, some seem to be more in “it” than others when “it” comes down to mitigating greenhouse gas sources.

Beyond enteric fermentation, where else should we look to reduce emissions? Domestically, we should focus on the two sectors that have an oversized contribution to greenhouse gas emissions: industry and transportation. No, we should not accomplish this by pursuing an anti-prosperity agenda that consists of downscaling industry, “rewilding” farmland, or mandating battery electric vehicles for individual transportation, as some radical, yet well-funded “left-wing” non-profits are advocating. In fact, pursuit of their agendas does not lead to a global reduction in greenhouse gases. It merely makes domestic industry and agriculture uncompetitive and forces manufacturing operations to move to countries that care less about their greenhouse gas emissions, such as China.

Instead, we should focus on reducing domestic emissions by providing clean, energy-dense, reliable, on-shore power generation. In the short term, that means a massive build-out of nuclear. According to some estimates, industrial emissions in Western countries could be halved if we switched industrial power generation to predominantly nuclear. But micro-nuclear could also have a major impact on transportation. Aircraft carriers and submarines powered by micro-nuclear engines have been around for decades, so how come we still cannot power the world’s largest cargo ships that way? Mid-term, we should massively invest in technologies that promise to be even cleaner, such as cold fusion or zero-point energy systems. On the global scene, we should use diplomacy to persuade large emitters, such as India and China, to pursue the same strategy. While diplomacy can only go that far, our investment in energy-dense power generation will drastically scale down imports of solar panels, wind blades and battery-electric vehicle components from China, much of which is produced there with huge amounts of coal-fired power anyway. Reducing those imports is therefore a true “win-win”: it is both a win for domestic economies and for the environment.

Given that enteric fermentation only has an insignificant impact on global climate at best, the answer is actually “No, no, no,” we should not take hasty steps to intervene in it. The market for “burp blockers” seems to share some parallels with the market for puberty blockers: massive growth projections for a market coming out of nowhere that serves a purpose that is only needed for those who blindly adhere to the corresponding narratives. However, there is a significant difference between both: in the case of puberty blockers, it is crystal clear that interfering with the natural process of puberty has pernicious side-effects. Puberty blockers should be banned, a fact that certain Western countries, such as Britain, are waking up to. Children should only be taught one statement in that context: that they are good the way they have been born, which includes their bodies. When they grow up in acceptance of the fact that nature will always be capable of putting people on the planet in the right body, they will not have a need for pharmaceuticals, nor surgery, which would be truly “gender affirming.”

In the case of belch blockers, the picture is lees clear, though. While “health authorities’” assessment of them being “safe and effective” may provoke thoughts of distrust, there don’t seem to be any immediate red flags to oppose them in se. However, since there also isn’t an urgent need to use them, let’s do some more research and thoroughly investigate their long-term effect on animals. Since 3-NOPA was detected at parts per million (ppm) levels in one cow’s milk, let’s have a look at the how reproducible that result is. If that finding further repeats itself, we should also determine what the long term effect of consuming such amounts of the chemical might be. Other examples readily come to mind of chemicals dosed at ppm levels for human consumption, that were long promoted as “safe,” to be scrutinized and even banned years later for serious health concerns. The only ones negatively affected by a delayed roll-out are 3-NOP manufacturers (such as Arla and DSM-firmenich), as well manufacturers of their precursors 1,3-propanediol (such as DuPont Tate and Lyle) and nitric acid. I’m sure that those companies will also survive even if they can’t ramp up their production capacity for a few years.

Fresh grass, fresh hay, fresh apples, are all we need. Maybe some beer from time to time. Picture by Jean Alves.

We are not planning to add 3-NOP to our hay here at the ranch. I still eat my hay fresh from nature. I was doing just that when cowboys Jake and Hunter were mucking the stable a few yards away. They were discussing Golden Diamonds yet again.

“You know Golden Diamonds got in trouble for their bloated horses, Hunter?” Jake said. “Just a week after they got the sustainability award, they got a visit from Animal Protection. They are being cited for animal abuse for bloating their horses ...”

“Well, there’s some justice on this planet after all,” I thought. Here is what Golden Diamonds did not understand. Golden Diamonds added 3-NOP to their ruminant feed. But they forgot one thing: we horses are not ruminants. We don’t have a rumen, we have a stomach. Just one. Natural hay is all it will process.