ISSUE FOCUS 40 FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE July 2024 Mark van Nieuwland, Vice President of Bovaer® at dsm-firmenich: “On average we see a 30% reduction of methane emissions from dairy cattle, and 45% for beef feedlot cattle. For a typical dairy cow this translates into 1-ton CO2e saved per cow per year. To date we have enabled to avoid roughly 120.000 tons of CO2e equivalents already, and we are working hard to go into the millions of savings annually.” Approximately 40 percent of livestock emissions consist of enteric methane. When it comes to methane, especially beef feedlot cattle and dairy cows stand out. Although it seems very difficult to control methane, which occurs as a result of a natural process in animals, there are now rapidly developing alternative solutions to this problem. Many studies have shown that changes in the diets of animals and some additional additives can reduce methane release. One of these important solutions is the methane-reducing feed additive called Bovaer® developed by dsm-firmenich. We asked Mark van Nieuwland, Vice President of Bovaer® at dsm-firmenich, what we were curious about regarding the product, which is rapidly expanding around the world. Summarising the effectiveness of the product with the sentence "On average we see a 30% reduction of methane emissions from dairy cattle, and 45% for beef feedlot cattle," Nieuwland explains the details for our readers. Mr. Nieuwland, as dsm-firmenich, you offer a highly ambitious and innovative solution to reduce methane emissions in ruminants. Can you tell us the origin story of Bovaer®? Nearly 15 years ago, we started a series of innovation projects around the topic of how to avoid climate change. Well ahead of this becoming a mainstream topic... True breakthrough innovations take time! Maik Kinderman, our head of R&D and inventor of Bovaer®, quite early on succeeded in developing our highly effective methane reduction solution, which was subsequently tested and validated in partnership with research institutes around the globe. After the technology was scientifically proven other topics such as regulatory approvals, initial production and scale-up, practical application and recognition of methane reduction by farmers and traceability of CO2e reductions needed to be arranged. We were SAVING 1 TON OF CO2e PER COW PER YEAR WITH BOVAER®
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