New Zealand seeks to curb livestock’s gas emissions

Over thousands of years of evolution, sheep, cattle and other cud chewers developed a nasty habit. They burp and break wind a lot.

That gives New Zealand a distressing gas problem.

The country’s 4 million people share two islands in the South Pacific with 40 million sheep, 9 million beef and dairy cattle and more than a million farmed deer, all producing the methane that many climate scientists say is one of the worst culprits behind global warming.

It may be a small country on the edge of the world, but New Zealand has big ambitions in the fight against climate change. Last year, Prime Minister Helen Clark set a national goal of becoming the world’s first carbon-neutral country.

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Tagged as: Animals, Beef Cattle, Cattle, Climate Change, Dairy Cattle, Deer, Global Warming, Livestock, Methane, New Zealand, Sheep