Alberta cows — and their burps — spotlight a loophole in Canada’s methane rule

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.

The rankings, pulled from 2018 federal methane emissions data, were released in a recent analysis by a team of researchers based at the University of Edinburgh. They drive home the outsized impact meat production, especially beef, has on greenhouse gas emissions.

Agriculture is responsible for about a third of Canada's methane emissions. Most come from enteric fermentation — cow burps — which can be mitigated with different types of feeds and selective breeding but can't be eliminated entirely.

An inevitable biological function of ruminants like cattle, the most effective way to reduce the impact of these burps is by reducing how many animals we produce. Despite the link between emissions and herd sizes, the federal government has remained largely silent on the problem.

"What regulations?" said University of Ottawa professor Ryan Katz-Rosene, an expert on climate change policy and livestock. He said the federal government has implemented regulations and targets to reduce methane emissions from the fossil fuel and waste industries. Efforts to tackle them in agriculture have largely rested on incentives for farmers, not more stringent regulations.

Canada last year joined the Global Methane Pledge, a non-binding agreement signed by about 100 countries to reduce global methane emissions 30 per cent by 2030.

Details of how Canada plans to help in the effort were released in September, with a plan to curb the country's methane emissions by between 40 and 45 per cent within eight years. The bulk of these reductions are slated to fall on the oil and gas and waste management sectors, with government projections showing minimal changes in methane emissions from farming.

That's no surprise. Capturing methane from oil and gas facilities is technically easy and profitable because it can be burned to produce heat or electricity. That's "a lot harder to do" with ruminants, explained Katz-Rosene.

Researchers are trying to create feeds that reduce the amount of methane cows emit from their digestive systems, and some cattle breeders are trying to breed animals that emit less of the gas. Growing cows faster and more intensively also reduces their total emissions because they get to market size faster. Scientists have even designed "weird" apparatuses that fit over cows' noses and try to capture their methane emissions.

However, the easiest way to reduce methane from livestock is to reduce demand — like raising fewer cows. It's an approach the federal government has yet to take.

Only a handful of countries have started considering that approach, said Ben Lilliston, director of rural strategies and climate change at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, an American environmental group. New Zealand, a major dairy and meat producer, is leading the change with the announcement earlier this year of plans to tax methane emissions from livestock, he said.

Canada has yet to implement these kinds of measures, preferring instead to focus on offering incentives to farmers who reduce their emissions and investing in research on ways to reduce the impact of livestock. Still, the easiest — and most effective — way to tackle the problem is simply reducing demand, Katz-Rosene said.