Dairy farming has a notoriously harsh impact on the environment; according the the World Wildlife Fund for Nature, around 270 million cows produce milk for a growing world population that is subsisting on an increasingly western diet. As cows break down plant material in their gut for nutrition, a fermentation process is triggered and methane is released—which has at least 25 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide. And in order for cows to produce dairy, they must first become pregnant—in the vast majority of cases this is done through an imprecise process of artificial insemination, which means breeding huge cattle herds in order to meet demand. To address this, one group of researchers from the University of Nottingham has proposed treating cows with hormones so as they breed faster, while younger, allowing for smaller herds with a lower impact on global warming. But their proposal has raised some eyebrows.
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Post tags: Climate Change, cow methane, dairy cattle, dairy climate change, dairy cow, dairy environment, dairy global warming, dairy milk, global warming, hormones environment, milk hormones, University of Nottingham, western diet environment
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