In an effort to support his efforts to combat climate change, a Canadian dairy farmer has trained his farm’s cows as government officials and climate activists from around the world have urged people to adopt sustainable lifestyle changes to lessen the negative effects of the global environmental issue.

Ben Loewith’s calves are anticipated to be born in the spring of next year and will be among the first in the world to have been bred with the specific environmental purpose of burping less methane.

In June, Loewith, a third-generation farmer in Lynden, Ontario, began artificially inseminating 107 cows and heifers.

He used the first bull semen to hit the market which had a genetic feature that reduced methane emissions.

“Selectively breeding for lower emissions, as long as we’re not sacrificing other traits, seems like an easy win,” Loewith said.

Scientists and cattle industry experts believe commercially available genetics for dairy cattle emitting less methane could reduce one of the largest greenhouse gas sources as burps are the primary source of methane emissions from cattle.

Semex, the genetics company that sold Loewith semen, estimates that adopting the low-methane trait could reduce Canada’s dairy herd’s methane emissions by 1.5% annually and up to 20%-30% by 2050.

The company began marketing semen with the methane trait in 80 countries, with early sales in Britain, the US and Slovakia dairies, according to vice-president Drew Sloan.

According to Frank Mitloehner, a professor at the University of California Davis, low-methane breeding might drastically lower cow emissions globally. Others in the dairy sector, however, are wary due to concerns about gastrointestinal problems.

In an email, Canada’s agriculture ministry stated that although it has not yet evaluated the product’s methane evaluation mechanism, lowering emissions from cattle is “extremely important.”

Additionally, 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from livestock and the second-largest greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide is methane.

While farmers can feed chemicals to cattle to lower methane output, Mitloehner noted that because they are not authorised for use in the US, their effects disappear after the cattle stop eating them.

Low-methane breeding material developed by Semex and Lactanet, which released the first national genomic methane evaluation in April, based on Canadian scientists’ research, has been tested on 6,000 farms, representing 60% of Canada’s dairy farms. The first national genomic methane evaluation was released in April.