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Fact check: All mammals, including cattle, produce greenhouse gases

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Isabella Fertel, USA TODAY
·4 min read

The claim: Cows do not produce greenhouse gases

As the two-week United Nations climate summit continues in Egypt, misinformation about greenhouse gas emissions is circulating on social media.

An Oct. 30 Instagram post features a picture of cows grazing in a grassy field.

“There are no greenhouse gas emissions in this photo,” claims the post, which was liked more than a thousand times in two weeks.

But that's not true.

All living mammals produce greenhouse gases like methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide, experts say. Cattle and other livestock contribute to agricultural greenhouse gas emissions.

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USA TODAY reached out to the user who shared the post for comment.

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Even animals 'living in harmony' with nature produce greenhouse gases

Frank Mitloehner, a professor and air quality specialist in the Department of Animal Science at the University of California Davis, said it’s “certainly not true” that cows do not produce greenhouse gases.

“Of course, they produce greenhouse gas emissions and particularly methane gas,” Mitloehner said. “There's there's no question about that.”

Ruminant animals that chew their food twice like cattle and sheep are characterized by their grass diets, hooves and multichambered stomachs.

“Livestock, especially ruminants such as cattle, produce methane as part of their normal digestive processes,” Environmental Protection Agency spokesperson Shayla Powell told USA TODAY in an email. “This process is called enteric fermentation, and it represents over a quarter of the emissions from the agriculture economic sector.”

The CLEAR Center at UC Davis compares that fermentation process to “decomposing food in landfills.”

In addition to methane, cattle produce nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide during the digestive process, according to Mithloehner.

Greenhouse gases like methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide trap heat in the atmosphere, according to the EPA.

But methane from fossil fuels doesn’t have all the same characteristics as methane produced by ruminant animals like cattle. Methane from cattle stays in the atmosphere for less time than carbon dioxide but is considerably more potent in terms of warming the atmosphere, according to Mitloehner.

The Instagram post questions whether “a mammal living in harmony with its environment could produce methane.” But that’s a flawed premise, according to Andy Reisinger, a visiting fellow at the Climate Change Institute at Australian National University.

“Whether an animal lives in harmony with nature has unfortunately very little to do with the amount of greenhouse gases it produces,” Reisinger told USA TODAY in an email. “Every cow, even one that munches happily on pesticide and fertilizer-free grass, will produce methane.”

Politifact also debunked this claim.

Fact Check: Fabricated news article claims Ocasio-Cortez pushed lab-created meat to 'eliminate farms'

Our rating: False

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that cows do not produce greenhouse gases. Cattle produce methane, nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide – all of which are greenhouse gases.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: Cows produce greenhouse gases, like all mammals