News American animal husbandry
California wants to ban feed by-products
The American state of California wants to introduce a new law that ensures that dairy and meat farmers are not allowed to feed by-products from, among other things, the catering industry and supermarkets to their cattle. With this, the state wants to reduce methane emissions.
Not only in the Netherlands, but worldwide, the excess emissions of, for example, methane and nitrogen must be solved to a large extent via livestock farming. The new law, likely to be introduced in California, could prohibit livestock farmers from feeding their livestock by-products from nearby restaurants, among other things, in order to reduce methane emissions.
Reducing methane emissions
All this is due to a law that was introduced in 2016 to reduce the emissions of methane gas by 2030% by 40 below the level of 2013. The reduction must be done, among other things, in the emissions from landfills and livestock farmers. Regulating this reduction is up to the local government. The only thing that the government is not allowed to touch under current law is feeding by-products from food, drink, processing and processing to livestock.
The new law changes this. By-products would boost methane emissions. If it comes to the point where the law does indeed come into effect, it will be an attack on the rations and costs of the livestock farmer. As a result, he or she has to purchase more expensive feed to compensate for the loss of the by-products. The by-products are often delivered to the livestock farmers for a small fee. A consequence of this is that meat prices are likely to rise in order to be able to compensate for the high costs.
counteract
There is a lot of resistance to the change from individuals and organizations. Data from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows that 18% of human-produced methane emissions come from landfills. In California, 18% of landfill materials and products are food. In addition, the state has to deal with a food waste percentage of about 30 to 40%. Feeding by-products to livestock contributes to less food waste. In addition, when feeding is prohibited, it still ends up in the landfill, so that the methane emissions here again increase instead of being reduced.
Jorine Cosse
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