Greener Cattle Initiative Awards Two New Grants to Assess Value of Feed Additive for Methane Reduction

ELLINBANK, Victoria, Australia & PALMERSTON NORTH, New Zealand (Jan. 15, 2026) — The Greener Cattle Initiative, a multi-partner consortium created by the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR) and the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy, awarded two additional grants to develop scalable and commercially feasible innovations that reduce enteric methane emissions, which cattle release by burping or exhaling as part of the natural digestive process. The grants support beef and dairy industry emission goals and put methane mitigation strategies into farmers’ hands, empowering them to make informed decisions about which practices will work best on their farms.

Enteric methane is the single largest source of direct greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the beef and dairy sectors. Furthermore, methane is about 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a GHG, which underscores the importance of the Greener Cattle Initiative’s efforts to fund research that identifies and develops options to reduce methane.

Professor Joe Jacobs, principal scientist at Australia’s Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, received $1,863,363, including $409,991 in matching funds from Agriculture Victoria Research and Sea Forest, to explore the effectiveness and safety of feeding grazing dairy cows bromoform, a methane-reducing compound, daily during a 10-month full lactation period. The study is assessing the impacts of bromoform on the cows, their calves and milk quality to determine whether it can be used as a methane-mitigation tool for grazing dairy systems.

Dr. Stefan Muetzel, Bioeconomy Science Institute senior scientist, received $704,104, including $6,667 in matching funds from AgResearch and Ruminant Biotech Ltd., to investigate whether giving cows a continuous pulsed dose of bromoform can shift the microbes in the cow’s rumen (the first chamber of its four-part stomach) from generating methane to acetate, a natural energy source for cows. This research could help cows derive more energy from their feed while releasing less methane.