Don't have a cow! Bovine gases don't contribute to global warming after all, study says

Are cows greener than we thought? Looks like they’re not to blame for contributing to global warming with nitrous oxide after all, at least according to one study.

In fact, cattle that grazed on grasslands in China actually reduce levels of the greenhouse gas, according to a study reported in the Daily Telegraph.

Previously, many environmental experts have exhorted people to cease eating red meat, arguing that the methane cows produce through their gas emissions contributes to global warming. This study, though, suggests that grass-fed cattle may actually be beneficial to the environment so long as the animals are free-range.

The authors of the paper, which was published in Nature, stopped short of telling people to start eating more steak. The research was conducted in Inner Mongolia by Klaus Butterbach-Bahl of the Karlsruge Institute of Technology in Germany, who noted that his research overturned previous beliefs about the effect of grazing cattle on the environment.

“It’s been generally assumed that if you increase livestock numbers you get a rise in emissions of nitrous oxide,” he said, according to the Daily Telegraph. “This is not the case.”

After carbon dioxide and methane, nitrous oxide is the most important greenhouse gas of all. It’s estimated that emissions of the gas, known as laughing gas, from grasslands in Inner Mongolia and large areas of the U.S., Russia and Canada, are responsible for a third of the total amount of greenhouse gas produced annually.

Butterbach-Bahl discovered that the grasslands in Inner Mongolia in China produce more nitrous oxide when the cattle haven’t been grazing there, such as during the spring thaw.

So does this mean you can have your steak and eat it, too? Not exactly. The study didn’t factor in the methane produced by cattle or the carbon dioxide as soil erodes, either. All in all, Butterbach-Bahl notes that while his research doesn’t reverse the notion that red meat consumption should be reduced, it does demonstrate that grazing cows aren’t always to blame for global warming.