America’s dairy cows could soon have a less toxic effect on the climate

Methane emissions account for about one-third of the warming that planet Earth has endured since the industrial revolution. This greenhouse gas is more potent than carbon dioxide but doesn’t stick around in the atmosphere for nearly as long, so curbing methane emissions would be a quick win in the fight against climate change. And one of the biggest contributors to methane emissions is cow burps.

A single cow can produce up to 264 pounds of methane per year; livestock emissions alone account for about 30% of man-made methane emissions. While experts are clear that the best way to cut emissions from agriculture is to reduce our consumption of animal products overall, there has been growing pressure on America’s cattle farmers to move toward more sustainable farming practices. Starting this summer, it could be as easy as adding a methane-cutting supplement to their feed bunks.

In May, the Food and Drug Administration said Bovaer met safety and efficacy requirements for use in dairy cows. The feed additive, distributed by Indiana-based Elanco Animal Health, has been shown to cut a dairy cow’s methane emissions by an average of 30%. It works by suppressing the gut enzyme that produces the gas, and has no adverse health effects for the cows—or for the humans who consume their milk, according to numerous studies. Considering the U.S. is home to about 9 million milk cows, widespread use of Bovaer could have a huge environmental impact. “This will be the biggest innovation in animal agriculture to actually move towards climate-neutral farming,” says Elanco CEO Jeff Simmons.

Bovaer will cost dairy farmers about 50 cents per cow per day. To offset the cost slightly, Elanco wants to help farmers get paid for their avoided methane emissions. Once a month, farmers can use Elanco’s carbon footprint calculator, called Uplook, to plug in data like how many cows they have, how much those cows are fed, and the dosage of Bovaer administered. Uplook then calculates the methane emissions avoided as a result. Katie Cook, Elanco’s chief sustainability officer, says the tool is based on peer-reviewed scientific measurements and has been validated by a third party “to ensure that the calculations we’re doing are correct and to the standards.”

Uplook connects to a carbon inset marketplace called Athian, which launched earlier this year. Athian certifies the emissions reductions as carbon credits and sells them to companies in the dairy industry that want to reduce Scope 3 emissions from their supply chains. This could be a major retail supermarket or a big brand like Nestlé.

Elanco estimates the net return for farmers using Bovaer will be about $20 per lactating dairy cow per year. That calculation is based on an estimate of what the credits will go for on the carbon inset market, but also takes into account government incentives that are available to farmers who reduce their methane emissions. That income would, of course, be most beneficial to farms with 1,000 or more cows, which make up a sliver of the industry but are so productive that they account for about 70% of U.S. milk sales. For smaller farms, the total returns would be much lower, but not nothing—especially at a time when milk prices have fallen and dairy farmers are struggling to stay afloat.

“It is not only the right thing for the environment, but it’s providing additional income for them and providing some economic profitability,” Cook says, adding that Elanco is working to get farmers enrolled in and familiar with Uplook now, ensuring they’re ready to start using it once Bovaer is available nationwide in a few weeks.

About 160 farms are already enrolled; together they have about 700,000 cows. “And that [number] continues to grow on a weekly basis,” Cook says.

Elanco wants the green light to give Bovaer to beef cattle “in the coming years,” which has been shown to cut methane emissions by 45%. And this is all part of a bigger plan to program Uplook to work with other on-farm interventions so that farmers can use it to quantify the value of all their sustainability efforts. To this point, Simmons hinted that more sustainable farming products are in the pipeline for the company. “Bovaer opens up the path for more innovations in animal health,” he says. “There’s an incentive now to get to climate-neutral farming, and I think American dairy farmers could do it faster than anybody else.”