The EU is considering reclassifying methane produced by cows, the European Commissioner for Agriculture has confirmed.
Environmentalists fear that the EU will end up watering down climate commitments if cow emissions are rebranded as “biogenic methane”.
Green groups say highly polluting methane has the same impact of the environment whatever its origins.
Speaking in Dublin this afternoon after a meeting of EU farming ministers, European Agriculture Commissioner, Christophe Hansen, said he understood that farmers are under pressure.
“I think it is very important indeed because some people just say a cow is a cow but that is not necessarily the case.”
The issue will be discussed in Brussels next week, he confirmed. But any decision will be based on scientific advice, he promised.
“We have a meeting on the 16th of September of the livestock strand in order to exactly discuss this point because I think this is very important that we base this on the scientific evidence in close cooperation with the actors and I would not prejudge what is coming out.
That is not my role as a Commissioner and to trust the experts on that point.”
But Minister for Agriculture, Martin Heydon, said Ireland is already differentiating between livestock methane and methane from other sources.
“We have had very specific measurements in our programme for government and in our climate targets we treated biogenic methane differently in Ireland and that is very important and the topic of emissions will form part of our presidency report on the [EU] livestock strategy and protein plan.”
Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that is estimated to trap more than 80 times as much heat as carbon dioxide.
And yet it was excluded from EU climate targets until relatively recently.
That’s in part because getting to grips with it is difficult.
“Reducing meat and dairy production is a crucial step in mitigating methane emissions, and limiting global heating – and the most effective way to do that is to significantly reduce the number of animals,” says Greenpeace.
But there are also other ways that can help.
In the Netherlands, farmers have had some success in collecting methane from slurry to be reused as an energy resource.
Elsewhere, there have been trials that have changed animal feed for food that produces less methane.
The European Commission has pledged to publish a report with “solutions to more comprehensively address the emissions from the rearing of livestock, in particular cattle”, by the end of the year.
The livestock sector represents about 50 percent of total EU methane emissions.