No more stinky cows!
A wee pill to save the planet
04 November 2004
By JON MORGAN
New Zealand scientists have invented a pill that promises to remove the source of two of Earth's biggest environmental bugbears in one hit.
The pill, fed to cattle once a year, will drastically reduce harmful nitrates leaching into waterways and slash the amount of the greenhouse gas nitrogen being discharged into the atmosphere.
A team of scientists from crown research centre AgResearch at Hamilton have worked for two years on the pill and could be another year from releasing it commercially. However, they have proved it will work and are patenting their research.
The pill, a 250-gram bullet-shaped bolus, works on the beast's urine to repress the nitrates it passes on to farm soil.
AgResearch team leader Stewart Ledgard said yesterday that in trials, on farms beside Lake Taupo, the pill had been found to reduce the amount of nitrate leaching into the soil by 60 per cent.
It had also reduced the amount of nitrous oxide discharged into the atmosphere by 60 per cent.
"What happens now is that the urine converts to ammonium that is converted by bugs in the soil to nitrates that then leach into waterways, causing weeds and algae to grow.
AdvertisementAdvertisement"What the inhibiter does is hold back the conversion from ammonium to nitrate. This has an additional benefit for the pasture, in that more ammonium is then available for the grass to take up."
The inhibiter itself was not a new invention but the means of delivering it to a cattle beast was, he said.
More work was needed to test that the pill was not being taken up by the animal's tissues.
So far this had not been the case.
It seemed New Zealand was leading the world in this research, Dr Ledgard said. When going through the patenting process no other similar work had been discovered.
He was reluctant to apply the unscientific description of "breakthrough" to the invention.
"It is quite rewarding to find something that will help farmers and the environment," he said.
