Using the COP28 climate conference in Dubai as a news hook, on Sunday the federal government announced a new draft protocol on reducing enteric methane emissions from beef cattle, which is a fancy way of saying bovine burps and farmyard flatulence.
Burping bovines, as we have all come to understand over the past few years, are a real environmental problem, making their own measurable contribution to global climate change.
When ruminants burp as they digest their food, you see, methane is released into the air. When it gets there, it has more than 80 times the climate-warming potency of carbon dioxide as it lingers in the atmosphere.
Naturally, folks who want to trivialize concerns about climate change, more often derisively refer to this problem as cow farts, since methane exits both ends of a cud-chewing animal.
But that’s no joke. According to a story last year in the National Observer, “methane emitted from the burps and manure of about 75,000 cows in a massive Brooks, Alta., feedlot is the 11th highest source of the gas nationwide after a handful of oil and gas facilities and landfills.”
Environment and Climate Change Canada’s communications boffins decided this would be a great moment to announce their plan to “incentivize farmers to implement changes that would reduce enteric methane emissions from their beef cattle operations with an opportunity to generate offset credits that they can sell.”
They should’ve known better.
So, also naturally, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who was in Dubai with her private army of fossil fuel industry lobbyists and her political brain trust, couldn’t resist the opportunity for a little rage ranching .
“Some astute journalists have flagged that the Federal government’s bizarre cow emissions announcement calls for using chemical additives to reduce methane emissions,” she tweeted yesterday, calling this idea “a new low for the eco-extremists.”
Her tweet was accompanied by a cute image of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a Calgary Stampede cowboy hat and an AI-cutified cow that somewhat incoherently asked, “DO YOU AGREE? To reduce emissions from cows, the federal government is proposing NEW CHEMICAL ADDITIVES.”
The intentionally deceptive image was designed to appear as if it were produced by the Government of Canada, which I suppose one could describe as a new low for the Smith Government. Or maybe not.
The astute journalists Ms. Smith had in mind, of course, were the usual gassy bloviators in the right-wing press who jumped on the story as an excuse to attack Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault.
But an actual astute journalist, Emma Graney of the Globe and Mail, observed with a tweet of her own yesterday that it was “odd to take aim at this when Emissions Reduction Alberta itself has funded various projects to develop feed additives to lower methane reductions from cattle.”
“That cash has come from Alberta’s carbon tax on large emitters,” the former member of the Alberta Legislature Press Gallery pointed out. “Wild to consider ERA ‘eco-extremists.’”
She and others pointed to projects funded by ERA, the provincially financed venture capital company formerly known as the Climate Change and Emissions Management Corp., to help farmers produce “beef without burps,” as the headline of a story on the ERA website boasted.
The “large-scale demonstration project of an innovative feed additive,” the story said, “is showing signs of a 70 per cent reduction in enteric methane emissions.”
“Cattle were fed corn and barley along with different dosages of DSM’s additive to adjust the digestive system,” the story continued. “The ingredient was introduced to reduce methane produced by each animal, enabling substantial reductions in emissions from Alberta’s beef and dairy industries.”
In other words: NEW CHEMICAL ADDITIVES!
Well, this establishes once again that the UCP communications strategy depends heavily on rage farming and deceptive practices, especially when it comes to federal policies, no matter how benign.
It didn’t even matter to them that the federal news release politely pointed out “the draft REME protocol was informed by Alberta’s offset protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from fed cattle.” (Emphasis added.)
Likewise, it illustrates how Mr. Trudeau still lives rent-free in the heads of the UCP brain trust, whether their boss is in Dubai or here at home in Wild Rose Country. Nowadays he has apparently been joined in that space by Mr. Guilbeault.
This illustrates a timeless principle of Alberta politics: Anything Ottawa does is bad, even if it’s good.
What’s more, good things become bad the instant Ottawa takes them up.
This principle long predates Ms. Smith’s gaslighting or even the existence of the United Conservative Party, although it has become more prevalent of late.
We Albertans, of course, are quite capable of being outraged that the feds might try to shove fart-reducing chemicals down the throats of our fine Alberta beef cattle and equally delighted that a provincially funded financing agency is enabling exactly the same thing.
The UCP are a lost bunch, and a lost cause. What are your thoughts on this?
https://calgaryherald.com/business/local-business/construction-of-1-2b-biofuels-plant-on-edge-of-southeast-calgary-slated-for-next-spring
Hmm…sounds to me like “pie in the sky, by and by.” The plant will use “non-food grade wheat” as feedstock. Ferment it, create ethanol (it’d be whiskey if the wheat were food grade), presumably capture both methane and CO2 (sequester the CO2? If so, where?).
They must be very sure the ethanol and methane will be profitable. Or is it the fermented-wheat waste that’ll be the big money-maker? They expect to sell the stuff to feed cows. (Is the “waste” wheat so contaminated it’s not safe for cows to eat? Will it be safe after the fermentation process?)
I dunno, most of these schemes in the past have been far too optimistic. Biofuels in particular have had unintended consequences, like raising the price of corn for actual food because it’s being used to make motor fuel instead. Maybe the rising tax on carbon pollution makes this economically viable. But is it the best use of the wheat? I dunno. Time will tell, I guess.
Mike J Danysh: I think the land should be used to grow food for people to eat.
Agreed, though the report (actually, extended press release) says they’re using “waste” wheat–whatever that means.
Just finished watching Stephen Corbert’s show and had a few laughs, then read you post. Your reporting wins!
We used to have bumper stickers, 1970s, which said, One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day”. Now I find out farting cows are a danger to humanity also, so they give them something to stop them farting. I’d suggest there are bigger issues in the enviornment to deal with.
There are more important environmental issues than attacking or defending the poor cows. But let’s keep in mind some basic facts: the best productive soil in the world has been created by ruminants. They convert grass into useful energy and their byproducts create and enrich the soil. Their ecological role grazing temperate grassland sustains many native plant and bird species.
Since the last glaciers retreated in the northern hemisphere, those ruminants have mostly been bison, elk, deer, moose, and the like. In spite of Hollywood cowboy movies, an equal number of cows and sheep, who are also ruminants, certainly did not replace them.
In fact, the number of cows, especially in Alberta and the prairie provinces has not changed much in the last 72 years. In 1951, there were just over one point five million cattle in Alberta. Today there are just a hair over one million. From November 2022 to this November cattle on feed in Alberta actually dropped by a whopping 15%.
This moral panic about cows and agriculture in general is just being used to divert attention away from the fossil fuel industry’s direct responsibility for the climate catastrophe. It is also a handy way to rev up the more excitable and gullible in the community. The UCP, Conservatives, and Liberals are complicit in this. The NDP are so urban most of them don’t even realize they have been spun.
Given that the number of prairie cows has actually gone down in the last 70 years, it might be sensible to ask if feeding cows dietary supplements is really the most effective way to deal with the climate catastrophe created by the fossil fuel industry. But hey, that would mean setting a carbon budget and then we might have to choose among growing food and urban commuter cars.
So you are disputing that feedlot cattle are a significant source of methane?
This is not a diversion. It’s a pretty well reasoned plan to go after the emissions sources that are most easily ameliorated.
Dear D & G: All things are relative and need to be put into context. The historic methane emissions from ruminants in North America previous to colonial settlement is gigantic compared to the contemporary cattle population.
Think of all those ruminants like bison who actually changed the landscape of the prairies and were so numerous you can still find their “rubbing stones” worn smooth over millennia.
The fact cattle have been concentrated into feedlots and these are an easily measured point source is irrelevant to the climate. What matters is the aggregate number and that has gone down in the last 72 years in Alberta where most prairie cattle live. Killing all the cows tomorrow will not come close to offsetting the leaky gas and oil wells and oil field flaring, let alone the emissions from all the urban commuter cars in Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto, and the like.
If we want to reduce carbon emissions a simple tax will no longer do the trick. We need a carbon budget backed by numbers and judgement as to which emission sources are wants (like that air trip to Costa Rica) which emission sources are needs (like food production), which emission sources can be reduced (like urban commuter cars), and which can be eliminated with cost effective technology (like wind, solar, transmission, and electrical storage tech for electricity, or heat pumps for homes).
But there is no fun in any of that. The fossil gang has been very effective at diverting attention away from their guilt by financing diversionary efforts to maintain uncertainty and doubt.
Yes, the Blame Trudeau 2023 World Tour is in full swing now. Mostly it is a Federal Conservative initiative. While the Federal Conservatives are fairly consistent, the UCP has no problem jumping on or off the band wagon as convenient, or as some might say opportunistic. One day they are hugging Federal Liberals, the next day condemning them. At least they aren’t publicly drinking champagne with them yet.
Rage farming has been one of the best crops ever for the current Federal opposition, but one gets the sense they are soon going to need to do some crop rotation, or eventually risk exhausting and draining the grass roots. There is also an old saying and warning about how the voters reward a succesful opposition by keeping them there, that illustrates in another way the limits of outrage as a strategy. Sooner or later they are going to have to present their own ideas rather than just condemn Trudeau.
So in a way the UCP was ahead of their Federal counterparts when they actually did propose policy here. Of course as a government, they need to and expected to do that. At least, they were ahead of it, until they muffed it and slipped back into rage farming.
Well, Smith and the UCP have been accused of many things, but consistency is not one of them.
I was going to write something about hot aromatic air and the UCP but it was too on the nose. So just to say thank you David, for producing Albertapolitics.
And the TBA cult members will continue voting against their own interests. Boring, stupid Alberta.
Yep, thank you Danielle Smith. Keeping Oilberduh safe for cow farts.
Well they may be Raunch Raging on cow farts, but what will they say about this uber-methane? https://youtu.be/rNEu1Ytla6w?t=514
Hello DJC and fellow commenters,
This is probably the only column of yours that I would not really agree with. The feed for cattle can influence the amount of methane released by cattle. However, the lower amount of methane released on a corn-based diet comes at the expense of illness and suffering of the animals. Corn is Not suitable for the digestion system of cattle and is detrimental to the welfare of the individual animals. The reason that cattle fed corn release less methane is that the effects of the heavily corn-based diet makes the cattle unable to release the methane. Many of the animals become very ill as a result of eating primarily corn and suffer bloating, digestive problems, and liver damage and abcesses among other adverse health effects. Illness is part of the reason that the cattle are given antibiotics. . So, why are we suggesting a corn diet with another additive? Do we have no concern for animal welfare?
I drove by Brooks last week and the smell emanating from the feedlot/processing plant there is overwhelming. I don’t know which part or parts of the facility result(s) in the smell, but it is awful.
The way many cattle are crowded into feed lots to fatten quickly and live in their own waste, which results in more e coli, is a hazard to human health and undoubtedly is unfavourable for the cattle. (I generally source beef from a non-intensive and non-factory-farmed source. which provides an appropriate grass-based diet. The cost is similar to factory-finished beef from the grocery store.)
We clearly need to reduce production of green house gases. However, I think that there are more effective ways to do it. For example, all the talk of “intensifying/densifying” housing in urban areas fails to mention that buildings over 6 stories generally are made of concrete which contains cement, and cement production accounts for 3 to 5% of world greenhouse gas production. Almost no one discusses this fact when talking of creating dense “chicken coops” for people to live in.
Unfortunately, our federal government seems intent on virtue signalling without much substance behind it. (I am not suggesting that the CPC would be more desirable at all.) The Liberals seem to be very good at thrusting responsibility and costs on others without thinking things through. This suggestion of continuing to feed cattle a corn-based diet and include a new additive is inhumane considering the severe illness that the animals suffer on this corn-based diet. It would appear that advocating for a corn-based diet shows lack of understanding or care for, or even an interest in finding out, how this affects animal welfare. I’m a city dweller and not involved in cattle ranching and even I was ware of the negative health effects of a corn-based diet for cattle.
Here is a link to a PBS item, one of many articles, detailing the sad health effects of a corn-based diet on cattle. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/meat/interviews/pollan.html
Christina: I’m not advocating for a corn-based diet for cattle, of course. I am hardly an expert in livestock diets. I am pointing out the hypocrisy of the UCP. It’s a very good point, though, that feedlots have been a contributor to the spread of E. coli, a condition that should probably be treated as an engineering challenge, like the elimination of cholera in Victorian London. DJC
I don’t think programme requires that the cattle be fed only on corn and barley. That was simply one of the experiments reported. The article goes on quote one Haugen-Kozyra: “Globally there’s been a recognition that we need to be able to manage methane from cattle. We’re very efficient here in North America. In other parts of the world, cattle eat really rough stuff. The rougher the stuff, the more methane is emitted”
I would not conclude from this that the methane requires a feedlot diet that may well be unhealthy and would certainly be expensive.
Should the unthinkable happen, the blogger uses the headline photo to give us a glimpse of Mr. Peepers and his cabinet, minus the burps.
Hello DJC,
It appears that Minister Guilbault is fine with a corn and barley diet, as per the quote in your column.
I realize that you are talking about the UCP’s hypocrisy, and I entirely agree with that point.
It is important, however, to inform the public that the Liberals are also guilty of lack of knowledge or care about the health of animals and of people in its pursuit of this single aim. I’m not an expert on the diet of cows, but the evidence seems pretty clear about the serious health consequences of a corn-based diet on cattle. The extensive use of antibiotics necessitated by the corn diet and intensive feeding operations likely has also resulted in increased resistance of bacteria to our existing antibiotics. As we all recall, there was a serious outbreak of e coli in day cares, possibly caused by beef although the cause has not been determined at this time. A significant increase in e coli has resulted from intensive feeding operations and the corn-based diet used to increase animal weight quickly in a non-natural way. Unfortunately, these hare-brained schemes to, supposedly, decrease methane expelled by the animals fits into a dangerous scheme to produce “cheap” food for consumers which result in safety concerns about this food. With the corn-based diet, the methane is still produced but does not leave the animals and the corn-based diet produces illness and suffering for the animals. I think that the Liberals in their single-minded pursuit of one objective and the supposed virtue of decreasing green house gases is creating other serious health effects for animals and humans. It makes me very uncomfortable to think about both the animal suffering and the very serious consequences of more widespread e coli, potentially a very serious illness which affects everyone and particularly affects the health of children and older people.
The animal suffering is built into the existence of feedlots. The Federal government seems to be proposing a simple modification to an existing system that they have no power to change. If you want to get rid of feedlots, take it up with the Province or the agricultural conglomerates. All the feds are trying to do is to reduce methane emissions.
This may reduce methane emissions coming from cattle, but I wonder what happens to them. Are there any unknown externalities from this supposed climate fighting initiative?
Re: Trudeau ad….. not the only UCP dishonesty I am noting today. Strange deal, for two days in a row now I have rec’d a call, where the call display on my phone is an unknown number, so I don’t answer (too many sales calls ! ). anyway, I check my phone messages somewhat often, and both calls started with “this is Nate Horner, AB finance….. which is where I hit the delete button so I don’t know what the message was. I have no time for UCP BS. something nagging me about the display number so I looked at the list of missed calls, and todays said it came from area code 204 (MB). and yesterday it said code 462, which is not a real code not for anywhere in north america. Totally fake. Can’t figure why he feels the need to fake the number, when he introduces himself (or the robot does) immediately but very annoying to me.
I thought for a time that Danielle Smith’s belligerent reaction to federal announcements was just performance art. I thought she was just grandstanding for her fanboys. Now I’m thinking it’s worse than that. I wonder if Smith’s yammering is Pavlovian conditioning—or maybe a brain lesion.
Either way, Smith’s bravura performance of “we’re victims again” will get the True Believers riled up. Again.
The trolling between these two camps never seems to stop.
The best part is that Danielle Smith and UCP seem to be conveniently ignoring that the impact of massive-scale industrial food production on the environment is real, but owning PMJT is more fun.
In any case, I suspect if Ottawa offered support to farmers by underwriting carbon-migation measures, they would fall short, because … you know…Ottawa can only do half-measures.
Speaking of bovine bloviation:
https://www.alberta.ca/release.cfm?xID=89471EDCC4D0F-A04F-1622-7E1AABD6B5A59602
This is Alberta’s official statement on COP 28. These two — I, er, we — clearly have no business on the world stage. Roller derby, maybe. What a disgraceful duo.
Alberta has little sympathy for hooved animals.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/horsemeat-industry-live-exports-ban-canada-1.6987841#:~:text=Horses%20are%20shipped%20by%20air,total%20value%20of%20%2419%20million.
Nor do their southern cousins..
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/13/texas-farm-fire-dead-cows
I have to wonder about the mindset of Albertans!
Perhaps the tar affects the brain?
TB
Every animal on the planet depends on another living thing for its survival — even herbivores, which eat living plants or their gametes (fruits and seeds are the “unborn children” of plant life, after all). So whether you’re a vegan, lacto-ovo-vegetarian, or “meatatarian” like me, is purely about what forms of life you are or not willing to kill to live. In a way, being “vegan” is a form of discrimination against living things based on what taxonomic Kingdom they are classified in (note tongue firmly in cheek here).
With that brutal biological fact out of the way, what is the fundamental moral difference between eating beef, pork, chicken, venison, seafood, etc., which are all socially acceptable in our culture, and eating equine meat, which isn’t?
If memory serves, parts of southern Alberta, have twice the national average for intestinal disorders from the effluence run off.
As well, I remember back in the day when the province handed off permission to expand these feed lots to the respective Municipalities and then took it right back when the Municipalities refused to rubber stamp expansion plans of the feed lots owing to the water degradation.
This is really it, it doesn’t matter a whole lot about the total # of head of cattle, the problem is the industry is dominated by industrial cartels who concentrate these animals into massive feedlots that, yeah, have huge methane emissions, problems dealing with all the waste, not to mention the poor working conditions and lack of regard for the life and dignity of the animals or the worker.
This is of course to drive the COST of individual cuts down while keeping prices(rising?). This is a problem of capitalism, as many causes of our ecological crisis are. As long as we continue the obsession with corporate profits and making that line that has little relation to reality rise, this will continue at an increasing pace.
I think maybe instead of using tax money to develop an end run for these cartels to evade the responsibility for the external costs of their business we should break them into a million pieces and throw them in jail but hey, that’s me.
“In other words: NEW CHEMICAL ADDITIVES!”
As if the diet of feedlot cattle was not highly controlled and artificial in the first place. The probably vaccinate them, too.
The UCP and the voters are a strange potion of toxic ignorance blended with brazen lies.
Oh i guarantee you the modern feedlot bovine gets all manner of injections.
Any research into additives that might reduce Premier Cray Cray’s gaseous eruptions?
For anybody who’s still reading this thread, here’s proof that 1) other countries have this problem, too and 2) New Zealand is much, much more rational than Danielle Smith.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20231214-how-new-zealand-is-reducing-methane-emissions-from-farming
Hello Bird,
Your first paragraph especially outlines troubling practices of agri business, in this case the way cattle are raised industrially for meat. As you mention and as described by Andrew Nikiforuk in his Tyee article about this subject, contamination including contamination from e coli 0157 is tranferred to workers in meat packign plants as well as to the meat, hide etc. of the animals. The rise in e coli 0157 (which made more approximately 250 children in Calgary day cares ill a few weeks ago) is enabled by practices in concentrated animal feeding operations, commonly referred to as feedlots. Root causes of this rise in e coli 0157 are feeding corn to the cattle and the unsanitary conditions in feed lots where cattle are densely packed and often have no choice but to live in and walk through their own waste on a continuous basis. Here is the link to Andrew Nikiforuk’s article from September of this year in The Tyee describing the rise in s coli 0157 resulting from industrial-type production of beef through feedlots practices.
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2023/09/21/Rise-Toxic-Menace-E-Coli-O157/
Exactly, CAFO/feedlot operations are SOP in alberta (shock in a province where everything is run by corporations) even in instances where they’re raised humanely, the vast majority are all sold off to feedlots.
There are ranching operations in alberta that don’t do this and if you eat meat, they deserve your money, not the supermarkets.
The agricultural cartels that run the industry now are some of the largest and most powerful companies in the world, I would wager a company like Cargill has even more power than the Hudson’s bay company or the British East India company did. They run states, just look how they treated workers in alberta with complete impunity during the pandemic. Cartels like that set policy, they pick
Winners in elections. They start coups.
Both the federal and provincial departments of agriculture have been working on issues surrounding methane and cows for years. About 20 years (+/-). At least they were. I know the feds still are but I am not sure about the province since the massive cuts a few years back.