Cow farts? Let’s get some fact straight.

It’s rare that the cowboy world is mentioned in the mainstream media—in a good or a bad light. But lately, our charges, the cattle, have been making all sorts of headlines and taking a beating due to their perceived flatulence. (Most of the methane cows expel, by the way, isn’t even through the back end, but out their mouths during the digestion process.)

For example, Bill Gates recently told CNN and anyone else who would listen that cattle are “another big source of greenhouse gas emissions.”

Just before Gates’ statement on CNN, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pinned blame on cattle methane expulsion in her Green New Deal legislative proposal, as well. Here’s what was published in relation to that:

“We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast, but we think we can ramp up renewable manufacturing and power production, retrofit every building in America, build the smart grid, overhaul transportation and agriculture, plant lots of trees and restore our ecosystem to get to net-zero.”

Now, it’s easy to scoff at these statements (and probably justifiable), but as agriculturalists, we can’t just scoff. We must have an answer. If we want our kids to enjoy the life of raising cattle we enjoy and our predecessors before us enjoyed, we can’t be dumb cowboys. (I’ve addressed this issue before in a more general way and linked to BeefResearch.org’s work previously, as well.)

Now, I don’t know the science, and I don’t expect us all to become expert environmentalists, but we can’t just post a funny meme belittling our misinformed foes and expect that to work. We can, however, fight back by merely pointing to facts.

Beef Checkoff dollars were used to produce the information I’ve linked to below. (If you sold cattle, you paid for it!). So, click through these three, easy-to-understand infographics about how beef production actually contributes to greenhouse gasses. Don’t post a meme making fun of the misinformation. Instead, learn a little and post some facts.

What are enteric methane emissions? 

How have enteric methane emissions from beef cattle changed over time? 

Would removing beef from the diet actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions? 

 

image courtesy Pixabay/Julia_Nigh