Feed & Additive Magazine Issue 2 March 2021

ISSUE FOCUS 38 FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE March 2021 There are few options to reduce methane by the live weight gain of ruminant animals through better flock management or improved feed quality. One option is to reduce the breeding herd overhead (i.e. number of non-producing animals needed to sustain the herd) and introduce improvements to animal health, hus- bandry, and forage quality to bring down mortality rates and increase fertility. Another option would be to restore degraded rangelands and as such increase the availability of feed and thus livestock productivity. Such intervention would need to go hand-in-hand with incentives to keep animal numbers low. A ma- jor source of GHG emissions in rangelands of the savannah is the burning of savannah grass, a tradi- tion that is practiced to improve the quality of the land. This practice, however, produces methane and nitrous oxide and its control has the potential to mit- igate them. A change in the mix of animals is an alternative that comes with co-benefits. Replacing cattle with sheep, goats, or camels, which are more adaptive to drought conditions, may provide a win- win solution for informal livelihood protection and emissions sequestration." WHAT ARE THE SOLUTIONS THAT COMPANIES PRODUCE? In recent years, very serious work has been done to reduce the release of greenhouse gases, especial- ly methane, from livestock. It has been found that some changes in the feeding diets of animals, espe- cially cattle, have reduced the rate of methane gas. In addition, some feed additives that affect intesti- nal activities are also considered to be effective in this regard. The most important point in these stud- ies is that the developed solutions, on the one hand, should improve production efficiency and perfor- mance, and on the other hand, contribute to the reduction of methane release. Otherwise, the appli- cability and acceptability of these solutions are elim- inated. Of course, studies on this issue have not yet revealed very long-term results, but short-term data provide hope for a sustainable livestock industry. Let's briefly look at some of the solutions put for- ward to reduce gas emissions from livestock: ALLTECH INC. Two products developed by Alltech Inc., one of the major global players in the animal nutrition in- dustry, are particularly ambitious in reducing carbon emissions: Yea-Sacc® and Optigen®. Yea-Sacc is a yeast culture that allows producers to increase productivity in dairy and beef herds while simultaneously lowering emission intensity. Yea- Sacc stimulates fibre-digesting and lactic acid-util- ising bacteria, which optimises fibre digestion and Mitigation potential of the global livestock sector. The mitigation potential estimate excludes changes between farming systems and assumes the overall output remains constant. Source: FAO, Global Livestock Environmental Assessment Model (GLEAM), Result, http://www.fao.org/gleam