WASHINGTON --- One contributor to global warming -- bigger than coal mines, landfills and sewage treatment plants -- is being left out of efforts by the Obama administration and House Democrats to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
Cow burps.
Belching from the nation's 170 million cattle, sheep and pigs produces about one-quarter of the methane released in the U.S. each year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. That makes the hoofed critters the largest source of the heat-trapping gas.
In part because of an adept farm lobby campaign that equates government regulation with a cow tax, the gas that farm animals pass is exempt from legislation being considered by Congress to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
The EPA under President Obama has said it has no plans to regulate the gas, even though the agency recently included methane among six greenhouse gases it believes are endangering human health and welfare.
The message circulating in Internet chat rooms, the halls of Congress and farm co-ops had America's farms facing financial ruin if the EPA required them to purchase air-pollution permits. The permits amounted to a cow tax, farm groups argued.
Administration officials and House Democratic leaders have tried to assure farm groups that they have no intention of regulating cows. That effort has done little to ease the concern of farmers and their advocates about the toll that regulating greenhouse gases will have on agriculture.
Lawmakers and farm groups are now pressing for the climate legislation to guarantee that farmers will be compensated for taking steps to reduce greenhouse gases. That could lead to farmers getting paid if their cows pass less gas.
"I don't think livestock should be ignored. Every industry has to play their role," said Frank M. Mitloehner, an associate professor at the University of California at Davis, who has studied livestock gas for 15 years. But laws designed to reduce emissions from smokestacks and tailpipes won't work with cattle, Mr. Mitloehner said.
"The belching is very hard to collect," he said. "You cannot capture these gases."
The climate bill specifically excludes enteric fermentation -- the fancy term for the gas created by digestion and expelled largely by burping -- from the limit it would place on greenhouse gas emissions. The legislation directs the EPA not to include it among the various sources that could be subject to new performance standards.
Factory raising and ranching of beef and dairy cattle, as well as the inevitable trip to the final cruel destination, aka slaughter houses, are despicable evidence of man's inhumanity to himself, and well as other sentient creatures. The environment is being tortured, as are the animals. Shame on you who contribute to the horror by buying the dead flesh and drinking the contaminated fluids from those creatures. The true cost will never be allocated to the polluters and killers because the gutless politicians will continue to be bought by the promoters of these illicit businesses.
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