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[DSanner106 AT aol.com]

All this from eating grass, finally proof that the vegetarians are in fact  
the root of
all evil. There must be a HUGE cloud of methane hovering over  
California......
 
Washington DC, our largest pork producing district.
 
Drew
 
 
In a message dated 2/26/2009 6:34:06 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
lurine AT com-pair.net writes:

Smoke  and mirrors!  Do NOT touch the guys who are really producing the  
methane (factory hog and beef farms, both the animals and the holding  ponds) 
and tell folks that it is the sheep who are out there roaming over  a great 
area and swallowing most of what they belch!

Guess these  guys are getting some of that Teflon money.  Sounds like the 
kinda  pork study that routinely comes out of DC.

Lynda
----- Original  Message ----- 
From: "bobf"  <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>



Alright Lynda, and the rest of you  with burping sheep.  This sounds 
serious..  This am  WSJ...............

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Silencing  the Lambs: Scientists Target Sheep Belching to Cut Methane
Reducing Gas in  Livestock Could Help World Breathe Sigh of Relief Over 
Global  WarmingArticle

»By PATRICK BARTA

PALMERSTON NORTH, New Zealand  -- On a typical day, researchers in this 
college town coax hungry sheep  into metal carts. They wheel the fluffy 
beasts into sealed chambers and  feed them grass, then wait for them to burp.

The exercise is part of a  global effort to keep sheep, deer, cows and other 
livestock from belching  methane when they eat and regurgitate grass. Methane 
is among the most  potent greenhouse gases, and researchers now believe 
livestock industries  are a major contributor to climate change, responsible 
for more  greenhouse-gas emissions than cars are, according to the United  
Nations.

Gassy Sheep Add to Global  Warming

2:06

Animal biologists in New Zealand are leading one of  the most sophisticated 
efforts in livestock stomach research. Their goal?  To reduce global warming 
by producing less gassy sheep. WSJ's Patrick  Barta reports.
Plenty of people, including farmers, think the problem of  sheep burps is so 
much hot air. But governments are coming under pressure  to put a cork in it, 
and many farmers fear that new livestock regulations  could follow. They 
worry that environmentalists will someday persuade the  U.S. Environmental 
Protection Agency to seek to tax bovine belches. Some  activists are urging 
consumers to stop buying meat and thus slow climate  change.

All of which is breathing new life into the study of sheep  stomachs. 
Researchers have tried just about everything, from changing the  animals' 
diets to breeding new sheep they hope will be less gassy. They've  concocted 
cocktails of clover, garlic and cottonseed oil to try to curb  methane. They 
have even tried feeding the animals chloroform, which can  stymie the 
production of gas if it doesn't kill the animal.

But  sure as grass grows, livestock keep producing methane.

"We're at a very  theoretical stage," says Simone Hoskin, a livestock expert 
from Massey  University, an institution involved in the research going on in 
this  grassy New Zealand town. "A lot of people think we are insane."

There  was an earlier golden age of sheep stomach research -- in the 1950s, 
'60s  and '70s. In those days, governments were looking for ways to improve  
animal digestion so livestock could produce more food for a hungry  planet.

But as worries over food supplies waned, research tailed off.  Scientists, as 
it happened, weren't all that thrilled about fishing around  in animals' 
stomachs, which can contain up to 150 pounds of mushy meadow  grass. "The 
stuff smells in a way you can't imagine," Ms. Hoskin says. "It  really stays 
on you."

The root of the problem is that sheep, cows,  goats and other so-called 
ruminants are unique in the way they digest  their food. While that allows 
them to convert more energy from grasses,  the process also generates 
hydrogen as a byproduct. Microbes known as  methanogens convert the hydrogen 
to methane, which then leaves the animal  through belching -- and to a lesser 
extent, flatulence -- and then floats  into the atmosphere, where it helps to 
trap heat and potentially  accelerate global warming. Humans emit methane, 
too, but not so  much.

As awareness of the issue has grown, the U.S., U.K. and other  countries have 
stepped up their research. But "there is no question that  New Zealanders 
lead the world," says John Wallace, a scientist at the  Rowett Institute of 
Nutrition and Health at the University of Aberdeen in  Scotland.

That's partly because New Zealand prides itself on its  environmental 
conscience. It is also, Kiwis say, from necessity: Their  otherwise clean 
island is home to about 35 million sheep -- nearly 10  times the human 
population -- and millions of cows, deer and  goats.




As a result, roughly 48% of New Zealand's greenhouse  gases come from 
agriculture, compared with less than 10% in such large,  developed economies 
as the U.S. Agricultural leaders fear their  livestock-heavy economy could be 
at risk if there's an international move  to tighten rules on animal 
emissions.

Kiwis tried to get a leg up  on the problem in 2003, when politicians 
proposed an emissions tax on  livestock. Farmers thought they were getting 
fleeced and attacked what  they called a "fart tax." The idea was tabled.

But livestock owners and  scientists knew the issue wasn't going away. With 
the help of industry  groups such as Meat & Wool New Zealand, they put up 
millions of  dollars to finance a war on sheep emissions.

The group, the Pastoral  Greenhouse Gas Research Consortium, helped assemble 
eminent animal-stomach  experts from around the world. They included Ms. 
Hoskin, who had spent  much of her career working on such topics as the role 
of leafy turnips in  deer grazing. It also included itinerant ruminant 
researchers from the  U.K., Germany, Peru and Sri Lanka.

Much of the work occurs here in  Palmerston North, a town north of Wellington 
surrounded by rolling hills  and filled with some of the most sophisticated 
animal-emissions gizmos in  the world. Chief among them: 10 "respiration 
chambers," which scientists  use to measure burps under different 
experimental conditions.

Pumps  circulate fresh air into the chambers. Researchers rustle up an 
animal --  often a sheep -- from behind a laboratory, and then wheel it into 
the  chamber, where the bleating creature munches on grass. The concentration 
 
of methane in the air then usually increases. The cud chewer is  oblivious.

"They love it here," says Cesar Pinares-Patino, a Peruvian  scientist who 
helps run the chambers. The animals "can look at each other  and be 
comfortable." Sometimes they stay in the chambers for days, he  says.

The boxes help show what strategies are working. But scientists  haven't 
achieved a breakthrough. Many of the dietary additives known to  reduce 
methane -- cottonseed oil, for instance -- don't work well in the  long run; 
sometimes they cost too much or the animals don't digest them  well. 
Chloroform additives worked for a while, but the animals' stomachs  adapted 
and started emitting again.

Researchers are particularly  proud of one achievement, though: Using genome 
sequencing to draw a  genetic map of one of the leading methanogens. Team 
members passed around  a single-malt whisky when they finished that work in 
June. They say the  breakthrough should make it easier to identify compounds 
that can attack  the methanogens so methane isn't made in the first place.

"We now know  our enemy," says Peter Janssen, a scientist who worked in 
Germany and  Australia before returning to his native New Zealand two years 
ago to do  livestock emissions research.

Some farmers elsewhere in the world are  bemused. "I applaud them" for 
trying, says Eric Davis, a cattleman whose  operation in Bruneau, Idaho, has 
more than a thousand head of cattle, and  hence plenty of gas. But "I'm 
skeptical they'll come up with anything we  can practically use," he says. 
Besides, "I still have a problem with  whether methane is a problem."

Mr. Janssen admits his work would  probably be "fringe science" if it weren't 
for all the interest in climate  change. But he still thinks it will generate 
something useful.

"It  could be two years, or it could be 20" before a solution to animal burps 
 
is found, he says. But someday, "it will suddenly show up. And then you  will 
have it."

Write to Patrick Barta at  patrick.barta AT wsj.com




http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123561039911777481.html



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