Transcriber: dabin kim Reviewer: Emma Gon
As I travelled through South Africa over the last week,
I visited several great places and also enjoyed a lot the local food.
I even had the chance to attend a [inaudible]
truly where I got served one of the best steaks ever.
I have the opportunity to talk to some of the beef cattle producers
that claim credit for my great steaks as well as dairy farmers.
And both groups are very important for me in the work that I’m doing.
What you need to know is I’m a scientist.
I dedicated over one decade working on a way to reduce
the environmental impact of both dairy cows and beef cattle,
the so-called ruminants.
And I would like to share a new invention here with you
You may ask yourself the question,
why am I talking about cows?
In my home country, Switzerland, the cow is seen as an iconic symbol
of Swiss people roots, tradition and heritage.
And I learned here and South Africa, the cow is a symbol of wealth
and the value is universally recognized in traditions such as lobola.
And as you know, that’s where the family of the husband
is offering a gift or dowery, most often cattle,
to the family whose daughter is joining the household.
And there's a very good reason why cows are so important.
Cows and cattle nourish our world.
Over 80% of the global population has dairy products in their diets.
That’s 4 out of 5 people in the audience.
And that’s not surprising because that’s one of the most accessible
and affordable form of valuable nutrition.
And cows support our livelihoods.
Over 1 billion jobs globally are tied to dairy and beef cattle production.
And let’s not forget, they convert indigestlble feed
into valuable proteins for us humans.
But there's a big dilemma.
These ruminants, cow and cattle, are getting now
a bad reputation in some people’s minds,
mainly because of their environmental footprint,
which is predominantly coming from methane.
And methane is a strong greenhouse gas
and it’s contributing substantially
to climate change and global warming.
Let’s focus for a moment on this methane.
One of the big things that came out of the UN climate conference COP26
that took place in November 2021 in Glasgow,
was the recognition that methane matters.
Over 100 countries were signing up to the global methane pledge,
setting themselves the target to reduce methane by 30% until 2030.
And the UN Climate and Clean Air Coalition
even stretched this target and said if we reach 45% until 2040,
that's the equivalent of a 0.3 degree avoided heating towards
the Paris climate agreement target of 1.5 degrees. That's huge.
And the reason the IPCC report clearly stated that reducing methane emission
is our biggest opportunity to slow down global warming and climate change.
So what makes methane so specific?
First methane traps much more heat in the atmosphere than CO2
that’s expressed in the so-called global warming potential,
which is on a 20 year time frame, 84 times higher than CO2.
This also allows us to mathematically translate methane emissions
into CO2 equivalents and making things comparable.
And secondly, methane gets destroyed in the atmosphere
over ten years time periods, which is much faster than CO2,
which stays up there for hundreds of years.
Today we know pretty well where anthropogenic
that means human caused methane is coming from.
It’s basically from three areas:
It's energy, it's waste, and it's agriculture.
And let's be clear, we need to do something on all three of them.
But in agriculture, over 50% of this methane emission
is coming from ruminants and more precisely,
from the way they digest their feed.
This has been known for decades,
but there was very little that we could do about it.
I would like to share with you a very cool scientific breakthrough,
and that's currently introduced into the markets around the world.
We developed a technology to cut this methane emissions
from ruminants by anywhere between 30 and 90%,
simply by feeding the animal a small amount
of a compound that’s called 3-NOP.
This is now better known by its product name Bovaer.
And such a scientific breakthrough doesn’t come overnight.
It took us 12 years for the full product development.
And when I started over a decade ago, the odds were all stacked against us.
But we knew we had to do something.
So we ask ourselves, what do we need to do differently?
First we went back to basics.
Strictly speaking, it’s not the cow that’s producing methane,
but it's the microorganisms that live within this cow.
These microorganisms, they enable the cow to digest the feed
and turn it into valuable nutrition for the animal
or eventually for us humans that’s milking needs.
But by doing so, these microorganisms are producing waste products,
that’s hydrogen and CO2.
And there’s a specific set of microorganisms,
the so-called archaea or methanogens,
that take up this hydrogen and [drain] it to waste products
and convert it through a complex cascade of enzymatic transformation
into methane, which is then moved out.
An important detail for you to know is
95% of the methane is leaving the animal at the front end,
it’s burped out not at the back end.
We then took a deep dive
into the molecular biology of these methanogens of the archaea,
and like for all biological process,
this complex cascade of enzymatic transformations can be seen
as a series of molecular switches that turn the process up and down.
And then we have to decide
which of this molecular switches do we want to address?
We choose the very last step
because this is very specific for these methanogens
and doesn’t appear anywhere else in the cow.
This was also high precision strategy
because in this way we wanted to exclude
any unwanted side effects.
And next, we had to find out how do we reduce methane?
By combining structure biology data and modern computational methods,
we started to identify molecules that could interfere or reduce
the activity of this very last step of methane formation.
In fact, we tested over 5 million compounds
in our sophisticated computer model
and that’s a process that’s called virtual screening.
And then in parallel, we have to set up test capacities in the laboratory
to see if the molecules that are coming out of our computer model
had a real effect in real life and were really able
to reduce meth inflammation from these microorganisms.
Overall, that was a process of choosing test substances,
we did it with over 1000 of them, testing them in the laboratory,
sorting them out and levelled them down to a handful of top candidates
and they went to a series of additional testing,
and then we moved forward the best one of them,
the molecule with the technical name 3-NOP
Afterwards, we moved into what turned out
the most extensive global testing program
for methane reducing feed additives ever conducted.
But we didn’t do this on our own, we did this in collaboration
with international agricultural research organizations,
their researchers and academics.
And we published all our results along the way.
Now, in early March 2022,
we have achieved 51 scientific peer review publication,
which also means that all our knowledge
is easily accessible to the public, to governments,
public and private institutes and academics.
And this series of publication also confirms clearly the efficacy
of our technology in reducing methane emissions from ruminants
in various geographies and in various feeding systems.
And since we know the mode of action
of our active ingredient 3-NOP in detail
the beauty is it always works.
And that's the type of technology that you want to have.
And that’s really going to make a difference for the sector,
but most importantly, for our planet.
As of today, we have tested this technology
in 15 countries around the world.
And we are also proud to communicate that we have already reduced
over 2000 tons of carbon emissions during this extensive testing period.
In 2019, we gave the substance an official name and called it Bovaer.
And how do you remember it?
Bovaer is a combination of two words - it’s bovine and air.
And it’s only a small amount of Bovaer
that’s making a big difference.
In fact, you only need to feed
1 to 1.5 gram of the active ingredient per animal per day.
In more simple terms, a quarter of a teaspoon
mixed in the daily feed of the animal
will reduce methane emission immediately to the target level,
anywhere between 30 and 90%.
Within 30 minutes, methane emissions go down
and thereby already reducing greenhouse gas emissions
from the agricultural sector and helping our fight against climate change.
A methane reduction over 30%, what does it really mean?
Well, as a rule of thumb, a dairy cow produces
roughly three tons of CO2 equivalent as methane per year.
And by applying our technology, you can take out
one ton of this emission out of the equation.
It also works for beef cattle,
beef cattle a little bit smaller,
the emission baseline in methane is a bit less.
So we say, as a rule of thumb, we take out half a ton for this species.
Another way of looking at it is feeding this technology Bovaer to three animals
is the equivalent of taking a family sized car off the road.
And this emission reduction is significant for any sector.
And then also with the millions of cattles out there,
the potential of this technology runs into
the reduction of millions of tons of CO2 equivalent.
What does it mean for you and me as consumer?
Well, let’s quickly have a look at the carbon footprint of a liter for milk.
50% of this carbon footprint of a liter of milk
is coming from the methane from the cow.
And by applying our technology,
you can take out up to 20% of this carbon footprint of the milk.
And considering that 30% of our individual footprints,
yours and mine, is coming from the food we eat,
then it’s clear that this technolog is really key
for a more sustainable food production system.
And this amount of greenhouse gas emission reduction
is relevant for any sector,
but most importantly, for our planet.
Of all the challenges we face, climate change is a global one affecting us all,
and we are all requested to do something about it.
In essence, that means reducing
greenhouse gas emissions at scale or decarbonization at scale.
I showed you that the agricultural sector can be a key player
or a key contributor towards this strategy.
The story I shared is a story of determination, innovative thinking
and great teamwork to tackle this important issue
of methane emissions from ruminants.
And by making sustainability the central purpose of our innovation,
we now can go to work every day and say
we truly enable the farmer to make a big difference
in our global efforts against climate change.
Thank you.