The Exchanges

Q I'm very excited to talk about enteric methane emissions, starting with the mechanics, I guess. So, can you explain just what causes enteric methane emissions? Like, where does it come from, and why?

A Yeah, enteric methane emissions are really, um, can be thought of as a waste process, right? This is a waste process for ruminant animals to get rid of, uh, the end process of their metabolisms. Um, Ruminants, in general, cattle, sheep, goats, they eat really complex organic matter, like grass, which is a complex, uh, you know, substrate, and they ferment it. So, you know, cattle are just giant fermentation vessels on legs, um, and they break down this matter and generate CO₂ and hydrogen and methanogens inside the rumen, combine those to produce methane, which the cow Burps out. Um, and some of that methane is also absorbed into the bloodstream and breathed out their lungs. Um, and that is the, that is the largest source of methane, uh, anthropogenic source of methane, uh, globally.

AI assessment note: “methanogens inside the rumen, combine those to produce methane, which the cow Burps out”

Q enteric methane emissions, including feed additives, but setting aside the sort of new feed additives that we humans are introducing, like, how much variability is there in the amount of methane that is produced by, let's just say like apples to apples, the same cow Eating one type of grass or one type of feed versus another type of feed. Is it a substantial variability or is it pretty consistent?

A Yeah, the, the diet can, can generate wild variability in the, uh, how much methane an animal actually produces. So, for instance, the, the, the large discrepancy is dairy cows versus, like, beef, beef cattle, or beef cattle in a feedlot. So, dairy cattle are fed of forage ration, um, higher, higher in fiber content, um, overall dry matter intakes increase, and that's really the number one, uh, indicator how much a methane an animal is going to create, is how much dry matter They're actually intaking. Um, but when it comes to, like, a beef feedlot, These animals are generally fed a higher ration of grain. These simpler, simpler sugars, easier to digest, they pass through the rumen, uh, much faster, and they're not, they're not as methanogenic. So, uh, beef animals produce significantly less at the feedlot stage than, say, a dairy animal.

AI assessment note: “the diet can, can generate wild variability in the, uh, how much methane an animal actually produces”

Q have a pretty muted impact but are the easiest to implement, and then, you know, it gets more and more, I don't know, um, directly influential on the thing and harder to implement, uh, as you scale up. So let's think about it in that context, starting with just the operational changes. Like, what are the things that can be done by an individual farmer, um, To reduce methane emissions?

A So, um, uh, first, first I'd like to kind of put this in, in a smallholder context. So in kind of the, the, the lower intensity systems, what could they do to decrease emissions? And it's, it's a host of management changes in how we approach production. So a grazing animal, this is a real example at, at a Kenya. So a grazing animal Supplemented with some low quality byproducts. They're just foraging out on pasture. They're going to produce probably a 180 liters of milk a year. That's probably a two to three month milking cycle. It's like two liters a day. It's not a lot of milk. That animal is going to produce about 55 kilos of methane during that year. Now, if we're able to maximize that animal's productivity, if it was fed properly, it had the proper supplementation, um, you know, we really dialed in its, its diet, we could change that dramatically. It would be fed more, so it would actually produce more methane. So if you put it on a, you know, a full production ration, uh, it would probably boost up to about 90 kilos of methane per year, so almost double the methane per that animal. But that animal is going to milk longer. You could produce up to 4600 liters a year from that 180, right? We're talking a twenty-fold increase in milk production. And then, so if you compare that to how many animals were on that basal diet, you could displace 20, you know, 25 animals. Um, if, as…

AI assessment note: “if it was fed properly, it had the proper supplementation”

Q And, like, can you just go a little bit more into the mechanics of that? Why, or maybe from an evolutionary perspective, like, why, why did ruminants evolve methanogens? What, what is happening in the rumen that makes it worthwhile to, you know, ingest grass and produce methane?

A Right, well, I mean, um, you have a lot of open forage, so you have, grass is available, but the problem is it's bound in complex forms, and the energy isn't available for the animal. So you need a complex mixture of organisms that are able to break down that matter into smaller and smaller bites, and then they eventually generate volatile fatty acids and simple sugars that the animal can actually use. And this is a mixture of anaerobic fungi, bacteria, protozoa, viruses even, um, and they all work in concert to develop, to, to deliver this, but in that process, if you have too much hydrogen buildup, you, the, the process will, will stop, um, and you'll get backup of this, of this metabolic process, and so we need a good way to remove these waste processes, and both CO₂ and hydrogen, so by combining them, In forming that gas, and then liberating that via burps out of the system, you're able to effectively remove hydrogen from the system.

AI assessment note: “so by combining them... you're able to effectively remove hydrogen from the system”

Q talk about what I think has been, at least in the, the world of climate tech and, like, startups and innovations and financing activity, where most of the attention dollars have gone, which is to feed additives. Um, basically, feed the cattle something new, and that thing new prohibits some amount of methane emissions. Can you just talk about that category broadly and how you, sort of, break it down?

A Sure, yeah. There's, um, so generally, there, there's a couple of different classes of, of feed additives, and based on how they work. There are additives that, uh, we consider alternative hydrogen sinks. So these are compounds that keep hydrogen away from methanogens and, you know, uh, decrease the amount that's actually formed in a methane. And then there are, uh, methanogenesis inhibitors. So these are chemical or natural synthetic compounds. That directly inhibit enzymes in the methanogenesis pathway, and so those are the, kind of, the two large classes that have been developed, and, uh, Been several years of research behind them. The alternative, uh, uh, hydrogen acceptors, things like nitrate, um, is a, has been a common one, although its general efficacy is generally lower than 10%, and there's a limit to how much you can feed. There are compounds like lactate and fumarate, which are hydrogen acceptors and can lead into propionate production, which is a good volume of fatty acids, helps, uh, uh, uh, fat production in animals. And, uh, but when you switch to methanogenesis inhibitors, some of the, the large ones are, like, three nitroxypropanol, which is sold under the trade name Beauvair, that was developed by, uh, DSM. And that is, that was a direct effort. I mean, they went through the methanogenesis pathway and developed a compound to inhibit methanogenesis. Um, and t…

AI assessment note: “there's a couple of different classes of, of feed additives, and based on how they work”

Q they need regulatory approval. Um, And, and so I'm interested in your perspective on how easy or challenging that is, and I know it's jurisdiction specific, but, but broadly, what are we seeing there? And then any other issues? Public perception. Is that a big challenge? You know, consumer adoption, et cetera. Like, what are the things that are going to make it annoyingly slow to adopt, um, these solutions?

A Yeah, the, the, the regulatory part is something we've been pretty, uh, actively trying to overcome, actually for quite some time. Um, these products are considered, um, New animal drugs. You know, especially here in the US. Other countries have pathways for products that only act inside the GI tract. They can classify them under a different mechanism. They can approve them under a different mechanism. But here in the US, if you're going to make a claim about something, like it decreases methane emissions, um, you have to prove that. And that really pigeonholes you into, um, A new animal drug pathway, which is quite extensive. We're talking, you know, average of upwards of eight years to get through the process. Um, whereas the efforts right now are to take what we have, it's called a feed additive petition process, and amend that to have, uh, to, to show proof of efficacy. So a feed additive petition process could be like two years. Significant, you know, fold reduction in, in the time frame for regulatory, but you still have to prove that it works. Right. Um, and seemingly regulatory doesn't care how well it works, just that you can demonstrate that there's a significant difference, um, in the base case versus using your product on what you're measuring. Um, so they won't care if it's 20% or 30%, just as long as it's, it does or does not do its job. Um, one product has been a…

AI assessment note: “We're talking, you know, average of upwards of eight years to get through”

Q where is it coming from geographically predominantly? Like where are the ruminants? And then second, um, I know there are big differences. You already mentioned the differences, for example, between dairy cattle and beef, Cattle. But I know there's also big differences between, for example, feedlot animals and pasture animals. So can you just give me like a couple different slices of a breakdown of where these emissions come from?

A Absolutely. Yeah, you know, by country, region, the, the large proportions are from the Americas, you know, the North, North and South Americas, and Asia, with actually India being the largest concentration of, of cattle globally. Um, about a fifth Of the cattle population is in India. Um, and that's followed by Brazil. They're, uh, you know, in South America. And then China, a little over a hundred, a hundred million head. The US, a little over a hundred million animals. And globally, we're talking about 1.5 billion cattle. And it's not just the numbers, right? Because you could say, well, a fifth are in India. We should be, we focus it, focusing on, um, where most of the head are. Really has to do with their efficiency as well, and how, and how they're managed, because how they're managed is directly related to how much methane they're going to produce, and how, uh, productive those animals are. So, broken down, you know, we have kind of the five big one, and that's, you know, India, Brazil, China, US, Argentina, uh, the EU. Um, and most of that is cattle, so 77% of that is cattle, and then there's a, like a 15% is actually buffalo. And then we have smaller ruminants, um, like sheeps and goats, which make up a much smaller, uh, section of the, of the emissions.

AI assessment note: “by country, region, the, the large proportions are from the Americas”

Q Buffalo, I would not have known. Just, I don't know. Where, where are there a lot of buffalo?

A India. There's actually a lot of water buffalo in India. They are a quite resilient, quite a resilient, um, uh, species. And, you know, they're also in, we kind of, you know, frame the context here, um, We often think about cattle raising and, you know, livestock production systems in a U.S. context or in a high-income country context, and that's not the context that we're operating in, in these systems. These are smallholder farms where these individual producers might have one to two acres of land, and they might have three to four animals, um, but there's tens of millions of smallholder farmers in this instance. So these animals, like these buffalo, for instance, are serving multiple purposes. They might be work animals. They might be status symbols in some, uh, some instances, and they're also serving as a form of, uh, bank account for these. These are a form of resiliency for, uh, for smallholder farmers. So, and how they're, again, how they're managed plays into their emissions. So, like, uh, an animal on pasture is going to produce significantly more, uh, methane than an animal on a feedlot, right?

AI assessment note: “India. There's actually a lot of water buffalo in India.”

Q to the cattle very often, that limits you to feedlot, or feedlot-like animals, which, uh, as I said before, we'll come back to later, because that is a very small minority of all cattle in the world, right? So how do you think about the kind of scope and applicability of these feed additives? In total, and is there any prospect of sort of solving that problem for pasture animals?

A So as far as, uh, pasture-based delivery, uh, Things like three NOP, the actual size of the molecule is generally considered too large to be, uh, delivered in a, in a smaller format. So one of the delivery formats that we've been entertaining is a bolus. Boluses are kind of standard practice for delivering minerals, um, you know, vitamins, nutrients to cattle. And really what it is, is a, a really, think about a, a large hard pressed pill that you would, you know, take in your vitamin mix every morning. It's like that. And it's inserted. Into the room, and it might be up to 300 grams, um, and it sits there, and slow releases over time. Now, um, obviously the size of that's gonna be the limiting factor, um, and the mode of action. Three in OP, you have to feed that thing twice a day, because it metabolizes very quickly. It works very well, but it metabolizes very quickly. There have been some efforts to try to put bromoform, much smaller molecule, into a slow release bolus format. But this is really the next bastion of research that is needed. We understand, you know, the beachhead market that, uh, these high-income, you know, countries, their dairies, large intensive dairy systems and feedlots that, you know, we can, uh, deliver these products into, but we need to be innovating for the pasture setting, and there are a couple of different approaches in that, you know, bolus incl…

AI assessment note: “one of the delivery formats that we've been entertaining is a bolus.”

Q a lot of greenhouse gas emissions, and it's increasing. Um, I guess the first point to make is that there's a non-greenhouse gas emissions-oriented argument to try to solve this problem in some ways, which is that, you know, in an ideal world, you don't want methane emissions. Even setting aside the global warming potential of it, you don't want methane emissions from ruminants, because it's basically wasted energy, right?

A Yeah, that, that, that is true. Um, and you know, there, there's been a lot of efforts in, in the space to try to harness that wasted energy. And, you know, a lot of people come into the field, and they come into understanding enteric methane, and they think it's a new field. Um, but the reality is, is we've, we've been trying to solve this enteric methane emissions problem on an efficiency standpoint for, since the For the, in the guise of, if we can yield that energy that's going to methane into milk or meat, we can have far more productive animals. And so that's really been the focus of a lot of the research until the, you know, the early 2000. We really started to shift, and it started to be this combination strategy of understanding the climate impacts of, of methane generally, and inter-fermentation, and how we could couple that to efficiency improvements.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, that, that, that is true. Um, and you know, there, there's been a lot of efforts”

Q those efficacy numbers, with the exception of some, like, you know, feeding bromaform to dairy cattle type of applications, like, 20, 30% seems to be, maybe 40% seems to be, those are, those are good numbers, right? Is there anything that's sufficiently disruptive to have, in your mind, a realistic prospect of a, if not a hundred percent, then near complete reduction in methane emissions, apart from just less cows?

A Yeah, so I think, I think a hundred percent is possible. Um, I think it will take a combination of things to get there. And I think it's, because it's not enough to just reduce methane, right? You reduce methane and And now you have hydrogen liberated. So you need to do something with it. Right, so there may be an application there as a, you know, as a sub-feed additive to maximize, um, uh, that, that hydrogen as well if the rumen doesn't do it itself. But also you could combine additives together with different modes of action. To, to deliver more. Well, one thing, you know, I'm really excited about is the combination of feed additives or vaccines to a breeding program. And so, we find that there are low methane and high methane phenotypes, and we can, it's, it's heritably tractable. We can breed for low methane phenotypes, and this could be, uh, 20 to 30% reductions while we maintain the same efficiency in, you know, in these high efficiency genetics. And so, Recently, it was, it was demonstrated that these low methane phenotypes responded the same to inhibitors as the high methane phenotypes. So you could get maybe 30% from, uh, a breeding program, and then you can stack a feed additive on top of that, and then now you're talking maybe, you know, 60, 70% reduction. And, you know, we need, and this is just based on low, low phenotype. There might be other genetic traits that …

AI assessment note: “I think a hundred percent is possible. Um, I think it will take a combination”

Q And similar question on efficacy. Like, what do we know about what the efficacy of a vaccine might be?

A Sure. Yeah. Um, I, I will say again, we're, we're talking early days. Um, But some of the first efforts came out of New Zealand. Um, we've been working on a vaccine out of New Zealand, I think, for, you know, for over 10 years now, but it hasn't really had the focus that it has, um, and really over, in the overall climate perspective that we, we're seeing today. Um, there's, so there's ag research out of New Zealand, and in the U.S., there's a company, Archea Bio, uh, which are actively trying to develop vaccines for this, and it is tricky because the rumen, Doesn't really have an immune system, right? It doesn't have, uh, an effective mechanism to deliver antibodies. You know, you and I, we get a vaccine, and we have antigens that target a, uh, or excuse me, antibodies that target an antigen, and we have cells that come in and clear those out. You don't have that in the rumen, so really you need to be able to deliver an antibody into the rumen, bind its target, and And deactivate it via that binding. And the way we're approaching this right now is you'll get a mucosal antibody response, and that antibody will be delivered from the saliva into the rumen. And that'll, that's where the antibody is actually going to be delivered. Um, and what we're, early days we're seeing, it's probably going to be more than one shot, right? It's probably going to be an initial and a booster, at …

AI assessment note: “I will say again, we're, we're talking early days.”