COUNTRY LIFE IN BC • DECEMBER 2018 Seaweed finds a


home on the range Cattle emit less methane, become more nutritious


by TOM WALKER


COURTENAY – A Vancouver Island rancher and a Thompson Rivers University scientist hope that feeding a local seaweed to cows will lower the methane that the animals produce. Comox rancher Edgar Smith has an entrepreneurial streak. He and his brothers have had an organic dairy and they’ve grown everything from vegetables to grain. They make award-winning cheese at Natural Pastures Cheese Co. and run up to 400 head of beef cattle on the 500 acres of grass they own just at the edge of Courtenay. The Smiths also have a permit to gather and sell Mazzaella japonica, a red seaweed that piles up on the beaches of eastern Vancouver Island after winter storms. “This is something we


drifted into about six years ago,” Smith explains. “The interesting thing about this seaweed is that it is an introduced species.” When oyster growers in


Baynes Sound, 30 kilometres south of Courtenay, imported Pacific oyster seed from Japan for local farms in the 1930s, the algae came along, too. It turns out it is also a great


habitat for mazzaella, which only grows in a few areas in northern Japan and Korea. “I’ve walked over it on the beach all my life, not knowing what it was,” Smith adds. “It piles up on the beach in huge wracks often over a meter deep and five meters wide.”


Around the world, seaweed


is harvested from the wild and grown commercially, with the majority of production in Asia. It’s eaten, fed to animals, used as fertilizer and processed as supplements and mineral additives. Carrageenan, a thickening, gelling and stabilizing agent extracted from seaweed, is used in chocolate milk, ice cream, toothpaste and beauty products. Mazzaella japonica is very high in carrageenan and it is also valued as an addition to Japanese cuisine. “We have a hay dryer at the farm that we use sometimes when the rain hits our hay crop,” says Smith. “Turns out that it is perfect for drying the seaweed. We strap it into 300 to 400 pound bales to sell, mostly to Asian buyers.” The seaweed market


fluctuates and some years Smith has product left over. He started to feed some to his beef cattle. “I grind it up and put it in the mixing wagon with my hay silage,” says Smith. “The cows eat it like candy.” Smith says he figured the


cows were getting the benefit of the ocean minerals in the seaweed, but he didn’t think more of it until he learned about John Church’s research into the nutritive quality of conventional, organic and natural beef available at supermarkets in Western Canada. “Edgar’s beef was the


highest for total omega-3s and among the best omega-3 to 6 ratio of the 160 samples


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Vancouver Island cattleman Edgar Smith says feeding seaweed to cattle – including his neighbour’s water buffalo – improves the quality of the meat and reduces greenhouse gases, too. TOM WALKER PHOTO


of retail meat that we studied,” says Church.


“I told John that we can


grow really good grass here in the valley,” says Smith. “I explained I was also feeding the seaweed, so that raised the question, ‘Is this helping to boost the nutritive value of the meat?’” Church also knew about studies in Australia and at the University California-Davis showing that feeding red seaweeds to cows helped to reduce their methane emissions. “I was really intrigued by


the seaweed addition in Edgar’s feed,” says Church. “Not only for the nutritive value, but for the possibility to lower methane, which is a major contributor to greenhouse gasses.” Methane accounted for 10% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions in 2016, according to US Environmental Protection Agency data. Domestic


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animal digestion and defecation is tagged at roughly 30% of all American methane production. “But most of the methane


from cows comes from their burps,” explains Church. The Australians have done lab tests with artificial rumens and UC-Davis has started animal experiments, he says. “They are seeing anywhere


from 40% to 60% methane reduction with as little as 2% red seaweed added to diets,” says Church. Church and TRU post-


doctoral researcher Spencer Serin plan to use a GreenFeed machine that measures amounts of methane that the cows emit while they are


eating. “We hope to see the levels of methane reduction they are seeing in California,” says Church. BC Ministry of Agriculture estimates peg annual beach accumulation of Mazzaella japonica at 39,000 tonnes. “With the small amounts


that we should need to add, I am encouraged that we would be able to feed it to all the beef and dairy cattle in BC,” says Church. “I’d love to add the


seaweed to my marketing,” adds Smith. “It would be great to tell consumers my meat is highly nutritious and is also helping Canada meet emissions targets.”


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