An Australian company was recently awarded a $1 million international prize for creating eco-friendly cattle feed that is said to be “equivalent to taking 100 million cars off the road.”
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)’s affiliate company Future Feed developed a cattle feed with seaweed that cuts down on the amount of greenhouse gases the animals emit into the atmosphere, according to Australian outlet ABC News.
The organization garnered recognition and was awarded the Food Planet Prize for its innovation, which Future Feed director Michael Battaglia said can virtually eliminate methane from cattle’s bodies.
“We know that just a handful [of the product] per animal per day, or 0.2 percent of their diet can virtually eliminate 99.9 percent of methane,” Battaglia said.
Methane is a greenhouse gas that has been proven to be the second-largest contributor to global warming.
Battaglia also emphasized the impact that introducing the feed on a large scale could have over time.
“We think we can tackle the dairy and the feedlot part of that pretty simply, which may be 5 megatons in Australia and globally 500 megatons of emissions,” Battaglia said. “That’s equivalent to taking 100 million cars off the road.”
CSIRO-affiliated company Future Feed hopes to use its winning to help communities gain income from selling and growing seaweed through an international commercial fund, ABC News reported.