Animal biosciences professor Christine Baes is featured in a Vice video discussing a major research project to reduce methane gas production in dairy cattle. Baes is an expert in the field.
In the video, Baes says the average dairy cow produces 70 to 120 kilograms of methane gas each year, mostly by releasing air from the stomach through burping. A greenhouse gas, methane is harmful to the environment.
But some dairy cows produce less methane. Those animals have become the basis for a genomic selection project to produce a dairy breed that is less gassy. Doing so would reduce the environmental impact of the dairy industry, she said.
The project does not involve genetic modification, she added, but is being done through a program of breeding.