Posted on 09/30/2010 10:31:46 AM PDT by JoeProBono
A dash of oregano does more than make pizza taste delicious: it also can reduce the amount of methane in cow burps, new research shows.
Scientists have been trying to decrease methane from livestock for years; methane is over 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide (CO2) as a greenhouse gas, and cows in the U.S. emit about 5.5 million metric tons of methane per year. Scientists have tried vaccines, breeding, antibiotics, and other dietary supplements like garlic or fumaric acid (found in lichens and moss). Alexander Hristov, assistant professor of dairy nutrition at Penn State, spent six years in his lab trying various natural methods to cut cows' methane belches. Eventually, oregano surfaced as the most effective methane suppressant.
Hristov then took oregano into the field, "and we saw the same effect there," he says, cutting the cows' emissions by 40 percent.
Decreasing methane production in dairy cows, the type Hristov worked with, also increases their milk production. "Methane is an energy loss to the animal, and if you reduce methane production, there is energy available for the animal" to make milk, he explains.....
Works as well as ‘Bean-o’ with people as well.
What a job doing this research. Let’s see...you feed a cow oregano and then stand in the field to see how many times the cow passes gas. Great work for a college grad in an R & D lab.
Great work for a college grad in an R & D lab.
Or a democrat......
OMG this is SO stupid.
The problem is that cows are not meant to eat corn and the other crap (literally sometimes) that they are fed. This is why they are blowing off so much gas.
Cows eat grass. DUH! Try grass fed beef sometime. You’ll never go back.
By all means, include oregano in cattle feed. Anything that mitigates greenhouse gas emissions and doesn’t hobble the economy should by all means be done to placate the computer-model-worshippers.
Of course, be ready to reverse course and encourage methane production in cattle farts if the Russian climatologists who are expecting an Ice Age turn out to be right.
Yes, but it takes about 55 million metric tons of methane-producing manure to produce enough oregano to keep cows from gassing the earth...
Don’t use too much of that Oregano... we’re going to need all that cow flatulance once global cooling kicks in. We’ll be feeding them more beans.
I wonder how much we pay these scientists to come up with solutions for cow farts. If these scientists would just stop breathing, there wouldn’t be as much carbon dioxide in the air — don’t they care about the global warming crisis?
/sarc
But can the cow still say San Bernardino in burb talk?...Therein lies the real problem.
People are PAID to do this “research”? Great pic.
My aunt would make me Bay Leaf tea..w/ honey for tummy aches.
But the real question is does it make the meat taste better?
Great - pizza flavored milk.
I think you have to think about this. But, are these farts nutrients for the plants in the field??
In a strange and totally unrelated coincidence, I just decided today to start adding oregano to all my wife’s food.
Watch out....They’ll be adding oragano to the school milk and Seniors’ Meals on Wheels.
BBRRAAAAAP.......
The classic: Homemade tomato sauce, fresh cow's milk mozzarella and mozzarella di bufala, sweet Italian sausage, fresh oregano, all drizzled with some olive oil.
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