Yes, you read that headline right. Our EPA wants to place a fee on the “digestive gas” that cows and pigs produce because evidently it is making a big impact on our environment. You know, global warming! The polar bears are dying! The ice caps are melting! We’re doomed! And one of the major contributors to this environmental disaster in the making is the methane gas in cow farts.
It is true that having our bovine friends eat grasses like alfalfa will reduce the amount of methane that they produce. Poor fellas, that corn just doesn’t sit right with them. Having them eat grasses would also improve the nutrition of the milk they produce.
It would also raise the price of milk, beef and pork because corn is less expensive and easier to store than grass. So that then would get passed on to us the consumer.
So would a fee. Congressman James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) who is the ranking member of the House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming is concerned about how it may affect agribusiness.
However, methane gas is much more effective in keeping warmth in the atmosphere than CO2, but has a much shorter half-life,” Sensenbrenner explained. “To show you how ridiculous this is getting, the EPA has got the proposed regulation imposing a cow fart tax of $175 a year on every head of dairy cattle in the United States and $80 for beef cattle, $20 per head of hogs.
He also joked that maybe the solution would be “to develop the technology to strap a catalytic converter on the back of a cow.”
I think feeding them alfalfa would be much more practical, but honestly do we really want our government regulating cow farts? I say not.
Update: Thanks Steve for your link in the ongoing fight against Cow and Pig farts. Fight the good fight!