From windows to cows: the new investment of billionaire Bill Gates is less interesting because of the amount and more because of the direction in which the Australian enterprise is leading (Photo: ShutterStock)
When you think of global warming and the emission of greenhouse gases, chimneys of industrial plants or a long line of vehicles on a crowded road come to mind, but whoever is looking for the real culprits, or rather - the "guilts", will find them in a barn or a pasture: methane gas that is created In the stomach of the cattle, as part of the food digestion process, it is the main responsible for global warming.
Before anyone accuses the cows of insulting them, it should be clarified that the blame is of course not with them, but with humanity's increasing consumption of meat and milk, which has greatly increased in recent decades with the increase, not to mention explosion, in the world's population.
Be that as it may, after years in which many billions were invested in projects whose purpose was to reduce polluting emissions from vehicles (for example), the trend, in recent years, has been towards reducing methane emissions by farm animals, especially cows.
In this context, the search for meat substitutes stands out, which, more than reducing the suffering of animals in the food industry or contributing to our health (two welcome side effects in themselves), will contribute to the fight against the climate crisis, the signs of which have been very evident in recent years.
The person responsible for global warming has been found (Photo: ShutterStock)
Leave the vehicles and focus on the cows
Now this trend is getting a significant boost in the form of an investor like Gates, who in recent years has shifted the center of gravity of his activity to ventures that contribute to the environment, improve water quality in backward areas, and more.
This is not philanthropy for its own sake, but what is known as "impact", meaning initiatives that have added value for the common good, but are intended for profit.
What brought one of the greatest businessmen in history to the gas emissions of cows?
Well - a study conducted in 2021 found that a combination of algae as part of the food mixtures that can be fed to cows, significantly reduces the emission of gases formed in their bodies as a result of the digestion process.
The company Gates invested in is called Rumin8 and it produces a food supplement that is extracted from red algae and can be fed to cows.
According to the company's publications, cows whose feed was supplemented with the additive reduced their gas emissions by 95%.
Moreover, the start-up does not try to manage aquaculture to extract the material from the gas reducer, since cultivating the algae until marine harvest will make the production process very expensive.
Instead of aquaculture, the company's engineers try to produce the material in the laboratory, so that its use will be accessible and cheap.
Since it is not a public company, the extent of Gates' investment is not clear, but it certainly points to the direction towards which the green trend that focuses on reducing the gases created in the stomachs of farm animals has recently tended.
At the same time, the Australian enterprise is one of the few that does not try to reduce meat consumption by engineering artificial food - from meat substitutes to printed meat, but focuses on the food given to the animals, mainly cows.
In other words: after years of ventures trying to focus on changing the food consumed by humans, there is a shift here to dealing with "the food of the food".
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