Profile
Sander van Zijderveld began his career in ru- minant nutrition as a researcher in the Nether- lands initially and is increasingly internationally affiliated. After 10 years of research, he switched to the application of research results in his global responsibilities with multinationals. Today, he is the ruminant strategic marketing and technol- ogy lead for Cargill, leading a team of ruminant specialists across Western Europe, helping its cus- tomers with nutritional support and innovation application.
The technology will be available in 2022 to the European market. Why here first? What we have agreed with ZELP is that we will have our initial fo- cus in Europe as there is a lot of attention on greenhouse gases. There have of course been some changes in some markets, like the US which has a new administration and has made a 180 de- gree turn on their view on greenhouse gases, so we are seeing interest coming from the US, South America, etc. What we have agreed with ZELP is to see how successful our collaboration is in Europe and sell there first, then expand to other areas. We are still exploring which countries in Europe to access first, and we will ramp up production when we are clear where we are going.
Are Africa, the Middle East and Asia on the agenda as well, and is there any indication of costs to farmers? Interest is rising everywhere, but an important part of this is to have an incentive system in place. The wearable will of course cost, and in a lot of countries there are no incentives to reduce methane emissions. So this is really important and needs to be put in place. That is also another reason why the roll-out will be Europe first, as there are already some incentives in place. Regard- ing costs, it’s still too early to tell; we are still producing proto- types. We are currently looking at manufacturing and mass pro- duction. Until we know what the production costs will be, we can’t indicate what it will cost European dairy farmers.
What about the welfare aspect? This is another important factor for us: in no way is animal welfare negatively affected. We will also be collaborating with independ- ent experts in this field to assess cows wearing the ZELP wearable, as we want to be completely sure that welfare is not affected neg- atively. The wearable also has sensors which allow us to detect diseases early on; if there is unusual behaviour, we will be able to pick this up early.
In addition to having environmental benefits, how else is it beneficial? Lameness, for example, could be detected early as movement of
the animals is monitored. Oestrus behaviour and rumination infor- mation will also be available with this wearable – from this, a lot can be seen in terms of the health of the animal. Our first priority with this device is that the cow does not show any abnormal be- haviour and, second, that we improve animal welfare through early detection of diseases.
Could this technology be used with feed additives to further reduce methane? In theory yes, but we have not explored that yet. Most feed addi- tives are targeted at preventing methane emissions. Some feed additives now have about a 30% methane reduction potential and 70% will still be coming out of the mouth and nose of the animals; the ZELP device will capture that methane.
In your opinion, is the dairy industry doing enough to tackle methane emissions? I do think so, yes. The industry is being increasingly active and fo- cused on the problem. The dairy industry has done a lot work over the past decades to decrease methane emissions, such as improv- ing animal breeding, investigating feed and nutrition impacts and developing feed additives. That’s why methane emissions from cattle is less than 5% of the total GHG emission in EU-28, based on data from 2015. However, there is still room for improvement and novel technologies like ZELP can accelerate reducing enteric methane emissions from cattle.
ZELP (Zero Emissions Livestock Project) is a UK company focusing on neutralising methane emissions and im- proving animal welfare through the use of technology. ZELP was founded in 2017. For more info:
www.zelp.co Cargill is active in 70 countries and will be the exclusive distributor of the novel device for the European dairy market. Cargill and ZELP will conduct additional testing at the Cargill Research and Development Center and at Wageningen University.
www.cargill.com
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