Beer for My Bovines?

Beer for My Bovines?

Haylie Shipp
Haylie Shipp
Reasons to feel better about drinking beer….

With your Southeast Regional Ag News, I am Haylie Shipp. This is the Ag Information Network.

Well, like I said, reasons to feel better about drinking beer…

Brewer's yeast used to make beer is typically discarded once it's no longer needed. Sometimes, though, the leftover yeast is mixed into livestock feed as a source of protein and vitamins. Now, there may be even more reason to continue this practice, according to findings by a team of scientists with the Agricultural Research Service.

Laboratory results suggest that using leftover brewer's yeast as a feed additive may benefit the environment by helping cows belch less methane into the air.

Now, although spent brewer's yeast is sometimes used as a livestock feed additive, they say that further cow feeding trials are necessary to fully assess its potential to reduce methane and ammonia on a farm scale, according to those researchers.

So how does this all stack up? According to data from the EPA, they say that agriculture - which methane gas would be a part of - was a source of 11% of greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 as compared to transportation (27%), electricity production (25%), and industry (24%).

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