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Burp vaccine cuts greenhouse gas emissions

You cannot stop a sheep belching or farting, but you can make sure its eructations are less damaging to the environment.

Belches and, to a far lesser degree, farts from sheep, cows and other farm animals account for around 20% of global methane emissions. The gas is a potent source of global warming because, volume for volume, it traps 23 times as much heat as the more plentiful carbon dioxide.

To protect the planet from such ruminant effusions, a team led by Andre-Denis Wright of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Perth, Western Australia, has developed a vaccine against the archaean microbes that produce methane in sheep rumens.

After two injections of the vaccine, sheep burped 8% less methane in a 13-hour test.

The vaccine, based on three species of inactivated microbe, was effective against only 20% of methanogen species in the sheep. Future formulations will attempt to hit more species and cut methane production still further, says Wright.

Food additives can also reduce the methane belched by livestock (New Scientist print edition, 15 March 2003). But they must be given daily, so they are only suitable for intensively farmed animals, whereas a vaccine could be given to all ruminants.

Journal reference: Vaccine (vol 22, p 3976)



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