Tag Archives: Cows

Bird Flu study confirms fears about H5N1 outbreak – human cases going undetected

Close-up-cow Tony C. French/Getty

Important Takeaways:

  • A small study in Texas suggests that human bird flu cases are being missed on dairy farms where the H5N1 virus has taken off in cows, sparking an unprecedented nationwide outbreak.
  • Authors of the study, led by researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, went further, stating bluntly why the US is failing to fully surveil, let alone contain, a virus with pandemic potential.
  • “Due to fears that research might damage dairy businesses, studies like this one have been few,” the authors write in the topline summary of their study, which was posted online as a pre-print and had not been peer-reviewed.
  • The finding suggests human cases of H5N1 are going undetected. Moreover, managing to find evidence of two undetected infections in a sample of just 14 workers suggests it may not be hard to find more.
  • To date, the virus has infected at least 175 dairy farms in 13 states. The official tally of human cases in the dairy outbreak is 14: four in dairy farm workers and 10 in workers on poultry farms with infections linked to the dairy outbreak.
  • Experts are anxious that with each new infection, the wily H5N1 virus is getting new opportunities to adapt further to humans. If the virus evolves to cause more severe disease and spread from human to human, it could spark another pandemic.

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Denmark to tax farmers $100 Per Cow for carbon dioxide emissions

Cows-Emissions-Tax

Important Takeaways:

  • Denmark is set to become the first country to hold bovines accountable for their carbon footprint.
  • The tax, which is part of a broader climate agreement to reduce emissions and preserve habitats, will go into effect in 2030.
  • The levy is expected to be approved by the Danish parliament later this year, and while it would be the first time such a policy has been implemented, it isn’t the first time a country has tried.
  • Because of a 60% tax break that was a part of the agreement, the actual cost per ton of CO2 equivalent for farmers will be just 120 kroner ($17) for the first five years of the policy. The average dairy cow in Denmark produces 5.6 tons of CO2 equivalent per year, according to Danish think tank Concito. That will equate to an annual tax of 672 kroner per cow—or roughly $96. In 2035, the rate will go up to 300 kroner per CO2 ton ($42).

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Manure, trash and wastewater: U.S. utilities get dirty in climate fight

Manure, trash and wastewater: U.S. utilities get dirty in climate fight
By Nichola Groom

PIXLEY, Calif. (Reuters) – Joey Airoso has always been proud of his cows, whose milk goes into the butter sold by national dairy company Land O’Lakes. Now he has something new to brag about: the vast amounts of gas produced by his 2,900-head herd is powering truck fleets, homes and factories across the state of California.

“It’s pretty incredible if you think about it,” Airoso said during a recent tour of his 1,500-acre farm, as a stream of watered-down manure flowed from cow sheds into a nearby pit. There the slurry releases methane that is captured and eventually piped into fueling stations and buildings.

Airoso is tapping into a growing market among U.S. utilities for so-called renewable natural gas, or biomethane, that is being driven by the fight against climate change.

For farmers, it is a way to get ahead of a wave of greenhouse gas regulation and make a bit of cash at the same time. And for utilities that buy or transport the gas, it is a way to respond to the increasing demands of customers and lawmakers to cut their reliance on fossil fuels.

“It is not something very many people are aware of yet, but it makes sense once it’s explained,” said Emily O’Connell, director of energy markets policy at the American Gas Association, the trade group for gas utilities.

Renewable natural gas can come from manure, landfills or wastewater and is interchangeable with gas drilled out of the ground. It cuts greenhouse gas emissions by ensuring significant volumes of methane that would have been produced anyway never reach the atmosphere. Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide when it escapes into the air unburned.

Nationwide, more than a dozen utilities have started developing renewable natural gas production through partnerships with farmers, wastewater treatment plants and landfill operators, while nine have proposed price premiums for customers who choose it as a fuel, according to the American Gas Association industry group. Renewable natural gas is currently between four and seven times more expensive to produce than fossil gas, a gap that its proponents hope will narrow as the fuel becomes more widely used.

BUSES, STOVES

California’s SoCalGas, the nation’s largest natural gas distribution utility, is one of the industry’s top proponents of the alternative fuel. It has committed to making renewable natural gas 20 percent of its supply by 2030, said Sharon Tomkins, vice president of strategy and engagement.

She said California has enough biomethane potential “to make a significant dent in reducing the overall emissions from both the agricultural sector as well as reducing the carbon intensity of our gas stream.”

Across the country, Vermont Gas hopes to one day supply only renewable natural gas, leveraging the state’s preponderance of dairy farms. The utility’s renewable natural gas supply currently stands at less than 1 percent of overall volumes, according to spokeswoman Beth Parent. But the company is helping large energy buyers in the state, like cleaning products maker Seventh Generation, Middlebury College and Vermont Coffee Company transition to using biomethane.

CenterPoint Energy, Southwest Gas, DTE Energy and NW Natural are among the other gas utilities seeking to integrate more renewable natural gas into their systems. Last year Dominion Energy partnered with meat producer Smithfield Foods on a $250 million venture to capture methane emissions from hog farms.

“It’s good for their business,” said Marcus Gillette, spokesman for the Coalition for Renewable Natural Gas, an industry lobbying group. “Many are on missions to decrease emissions from their side of the energy sector as much as possible.”

Until now, nearly all the market for biomethane has come from bus fleets and other vehicles that are able to use state and federal subsidies to make the fuel competitive with fossil gas. Production of the fuel doubled between 2015 and 2018 to 304 million ethanol gallons equivalent thanks to the incentives, according to a report from consulting firm Bates White.

Today about three quarters of renewable natural gas production is still used for transportation, though Gillette said that is shifting as more utilities seek to provide it for heating, cooking and industrial uses.

Some states are more aggressive in bolstering the renewable natural gas industry than others.

Oregon, for example, passed a bill in August that sets a goal of making renewable natural gas account for 30% of what is carried in the state’s gas pipeline network by 2050.

California, meanwhile, has mandated a 40 percent reduction in methane emissions by 2030, something that will spell specific regulatory curbs on agriculture in the coming years. Methane accounts for about 9 percent of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions, half of which comes from livestock.

For Airoso, that made tapping into the growing biomethane market an easy decision. “We’ve got a $10 mln investment here, so I had to figure out how I protect my investment,” he said.

(Reporting by Nichola Groom; editing by Richard Valdmanis and Chizu Nomiyama)

Alabama finds atypical mad cow case, no human threat seen

(Reuters) – An 11-year-old cow in Alabama tested positive for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as mad cow disease, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Tuesday.

The cow tested positive for the atypical L-type of BSE after exhibiting clinical signs at an Alabama livestock market, the USDA said in a press release. Atypical BSE can arise spontaneously in cattle herds, usually in animals 8 years old or older.

“This animal never entered slaughter channels and at no time presented a risk to the food supply, or to human health in the United States,” the USDA said. “Following delivery to the livestock market the cow later died at that location.”

The Alabama cow is the fifth detection of BSE in the United States, four of which were atypical.

“This finding of an atypical case will not change the negligible risk status of the United States, and should not lead to any trade issues,” the USDA added.

The only classical BSE case was an animal found in 2003 at a Washington farm that was imported from Canada and born before a 1997 ban on the use of cattle feed containing brain or spinal tissue, which can result in transmission of the disease.

China last month resumed imports of U.S. beef for the first time since banning them following the 2003 scare.

First detected in Britain in the 1980s, classical mad cow ravaged herds in parts of Europe until the early 2000s and was linked to the brain-wasting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.

(Reporting by Michael Hirtzer; editing by Grant McCool)