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18 March 21
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RSN: Mort Rosenblum | Good Times and Bad
Mort Rosenblum, Reader Supported News
Rosenblum writes:
UCSON — No privately run enterprise is more vital than The New York Times in an America at war with itself in a world facing authoritarian takeover and climate collapse. But the staid old Gray Lady, made over and flush with cash, is getting out of hand.
People often fault the Times on specious grounds, ignoring its strengths and missing the point of intended objectivity. But recent cases are deeply troubling, in particular the loss of Donald G. McNeil Jr., a globe-ranging expert on deadly plagues, when he is so badly needed.
The Times is America’s last family-run newspaper of record, with foreign bureaus and a stringer network extending to 150 countries. Its national reporters exposed truth behind a self-obsessed president’s false absurdities, financial manipulation and treachery.
At its best, it is stunning. Abroad, stories probe distant societies with words and images to show an inward-looking nation how the other 95 percent live. At home, seasoned hands pry open closed doors to reveal our own domestic failings.
The Washington Post excels at national coverage but is thin beyond American borders. Jeff Bezos has infused it with fresh resources but, with his omnivore obsessions and so much else on his plate, he is no Katharine Graham.
But beyond the Times’ hoary slogan – All the News That’s Fit to Print – it now strays into misplaced moralizing, advocacy in news columns, sloppy editing and “content” that on occasion smacks of a high-school paper without adult supervision. Stories that matter are lost in fluff.
This is a personal view. The Times has loomed large in my life since I was a kid. I turned down a job offer in the ‘70s to remain overseas with the Associated Press, then an ad-free nonprofit cooperative that was what AP branders mislabel it today: the world’s essential news source.
I’ve written op-eds and a blog for the Times. As International Herald Tribune editor, I answered to its bosses. I realize their challenge to attract young readers who don’t read and want news for free. New income streams are crucial when so many advertisers go elsewhere.
Ben Smith, the paper’s ex-Buzzfeed media writer, has it right: “It is no longer just a source of information. It seeks to be the voice whispering in your ear in the morning, the curriculum in your child’s history class and the instructions on caramelizing shallots for the pasta you’re making for dinner.”
The cost is a blurring of once-sacred lines separating editorial from advertising and self-promotion. It remains honest, scrupulously correcting factual errors. Yet a new culture threatens its historic mission. As it seeks to reflect diversity and widen its reader base, it upends newsroom tenets that have evolved since the Sulzberger family bought the paper in 1896.
In earlier days, it was like the New York Yankees. Reporters worked on farm teams or, like McNeil, as newsroom clerks, until judged ready for the majors. Some were poached from the competition. Egos clashed, but a shared esprit du corps defended the institution.
Now it also hires journalists fresh out of school, who are encouraged to use the “I” key, with thinly masked points of view, and sometimes forget it’s not about them. A page-two fixture connects reporters to readers with accounts of how they got their stories. And no one appears to be in control.
McNeil’s forced retirement puts this in stark focus.
His last story, on Feb. 13, was headlined “Fauci on What Working With Trump Was Really Like.” Tony Fauci chose him for a blunt exclusive interview on the distortions, death threats and backstabbing he faced to protect America from a president who let Covid-19 run amok.
Two weeks earlier, he was the subject of a different headline, inaccurate and unfair: “New York Times Reporter Used Racial Slur With Student Group.”
The Daily Beast had unearthed an internal affair in today’s jackal-eat-dog media fashion. Others followed, and the Times went public. This analysis is based on a lifetime of watching journalism go astray in a fragmented America with endless options to inform — and misinform — itself.
Working with Times people, I’ve seen all sorts. Some are unfailingly pleasant, suffering occasionally mangled copy with equanimity. Others not so much. Digging deep requires hard edges, and access to wary sources demands credibility that bad editing can destroy.
McNeil is an odd-shaped peg who defies round holes in today’s woke world. A curmudgeonly manner put off newsroom colleagues; his union activities pissed off management. But he is accurate and apolitical, intimately familiar with a complicated world.
He spent 35 years moving from copy clerk, beat reporter and foreign correspondent to his specialty: earning scientists’ respect with prodigious knowledge and forays into African and Asian backwaters.
When he started, the paper faced tough competition from The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, along with dozens of others that had Washington bureaus and sent correspondents abroad. Most were run by founding families with ink in their bloodlines.
News back then was a one-way flow. Beyond letters to the editor, readers had no way to kibitz. But reporters covered stories firsthand, steeped in larger context, with no distracting side gigs. If they fabricated facts, they were fired. If they got facts wrong, the competition shamed them.
Publishers expressed strong views on editorial pages, but news sections were sacrosanct. Beyond any sense of mission, that was also a business decision. Their survival depended on evenhanded reporting free of advocacy. In today’s world, this has changed beyond all recognition.
Successive Sulzbergers, alone among those old families, have resisted corporate takeovers and profit-over-principle compromise since acquiring the paper in 1896. After a rough financial patch, the Times thrives. But it is an almost unmanageable octopus that partners with other organizations in a range of projects and programs.
Each day, limousines await reporters who thumb tweets on their way to “contributor” jobs at CNN and MSNBC. The Times competes with news agencies and broadcasters for running comment on major events. The print edition is essentially a magazine; breaking news and updates appear online around the clock.
And there are those Times Journeys, designed to boost profits when the paper needed cash. Some take busy reporters off their beats for weeks at a time.
In 2019, McNeil shepherded well-heeled white kids from Phillips Academy Andover to Peru. An earlier Peru trip had gone well, and he reluctantly agreed to do it again. A young woman asked about a project she had done on race. He used “the n-word” in the context of their exchange. That got back to parents, who complained.
Dean Baquet, the Times’ editor, who is black, examined all evidence. Though pissed, he decided it was not a malicious slur. He and publisher A.G. Sulzberger decided on a simple reprimand. But 150 staffers, including many young new hires, signed an outraged letter. Soon after, in the midst of a deadly pandemic his stories examined deeply, McNeil was gone.
In a 20,000-word, four-part piece on Medium, McNeil gave his nuanced account. He expressed regret to those who took offense but cited conversations from his careful notes that belied fragmented quotes and distortions about his interaction with the group.
There is a lot to it. Rather than learn from a seasoned world-watcher, it seems, students lectured him on right thinking. Some, having not read Kipling, bridled at his reference to “the white man’s burden.” He was judged anti-Semitic for an inoffensive Jewish-mother joke. And so on.
He described a grilling by Charlotte Behrendt, the assistant managing editor who handles personnel, who he said did not show him the allegations against him. It all smacked, he said, of North Korea.
“What really offends me,” McNeil wrote the friend who had sent him to Peru, “is that The Times responds not by having you or someone ask me what happened and trying to get to the bottom of it — as Bill Schmidt or Peter Millones would have done — but by instantly declaring it an official job-discipline matter and convening a star chamber …
“This is not what I expected. You should warn anyone you recruit that the Times will treat any crazy allegation — even one by a 15-year-old — as a possibly fireable offense. I used to love working here. Now I’m so discouraged. Such a mean, spiteful, vengeful place where everyone is looking over his/her shoulder.”
Bret Stephens wrote an op-ed about the case, but Sulzberger took the unprecedented step of killing it. Someone (not McNeil) leaked it to the New York Post, which ran it in full.
Stephens argued that the issue was about intent. McNeil clearly did not use the disputed word — which he noted appeared often in the Times, including four times in the Richard Pryor obit — as an epithet. He concluded:
“We are living in a period of competing moral certitudes, of people who are awfully sure they’re right and fully prepared to be awful about it. Hence the culture of cancellations, firings, public humiliations and increasingly unforgiving judgments. The role of good journalism should be to lead us out of this dark defile. Last week, we went deeper into it.”
When the story broke, outsiders quoted pro and con posts on the Times veterans’ Facebook page, meant to be private (as if anything is these days). Robert Worth, a long-time Middle East correspondent, got to the crux of it: “Dean and AG (Sulzberger) make a decision, and then are bullied by a vocal minority into changing their minds. This is not the NYT I know.”
An earlier storm followed an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton, an ambitious hawk who argued that federal troops should quell protests after the George Floyd killing. Objections within the paper forced James Bennet, editorial page editor and a candidate to succeed Baquet, to resign.
A newspaper’s editorials and its selection of op-ed contributors reflect its own voice. Yielding to second-guessing from the ranks weakens its authority and diminishes serious readers’ respect.
These days, I almost need a wheelbarrow to bring in the Sunday Times. The latest Sunday Review (ex-Week in Review) had only long pieces by Americans on how the pandemic changed their lives. No editorials or op-eds. No world. Not even a broader look at how the year-long plague had affected 7.5 billion others.
An item in the page three “Of Interest” rubric was typical of many: “Asked to name one thing she made this year, the novelist Karen Russell (“Orange World”) said: ‘a googly-eyed owl out of toilet rolls.’” The magazine was devoted solely to music; nearly every picture showed women, “people of color” or both.
As America finally addresses old imbalances, we need thorough coverage of abuse and inequality. But when what permeates the paper amounts to advocacy, the Times loses conservative readers, particularly the aggressively white, who badly need its nuanced global coverage.
And that is another problem. The only foreign news on page one, lost at the bottom, ran four paragraphs before jumping inside. It reported that Marine LePen’s far-right anti-Semitic party was surging in French polls. A presidential victory, it said, “would be earth-shattering for France and all of Europe.” It would be even more than that.
Quality papers are vanishing fast. The once-admired San Francisco Chronicle recently brought to mind the 1978 National Lampoon spoof, “Dacron Republican-Democrat.” Its headline, “Two Dacron Women Feared Missing in Volcanic Disaster,” was followed with a small subhead: “Japan Destroyed.”
The Chronicle put this headline on a piece about the bloody armed takeover with broad implications: “Myanmar Coup Imperils Couple’s Reunion in S.F.”
We need The New York Times. How it evolves is up to the Sulzbergers. But given its impact on all of our lives, here are a few thoughts from a lifelong devotee:
- Should it stretch its people so thin, exposing them to opinionating and missteps on TV, Twitter and social media? Must they also be tour guides and brand ambassadors? Times-style reporting is a full-time job, and its journalists’ perceived objectivity is crucial.
- Shouldn’t reporters file fewer running updates rather than compete with 24-hour news agencies and networks? That would allow them to develop sources and liaise with colleagues in foreign bureaus to give broader meaning to stories that shape today’s world.
- Shouldn’t they rethink the notion that ethnic or other affinities lead to better coverage? Often, it’s the opposite. Language skills matter. But no one represents a collectivity. Getting the story straight demands professional detachment and across-the-board empathy.
We face a simple reality in a world that has no more minutes in a day despite the infinite words and images that now overwhelm us from every direction: Less is more. We need more skilled editors, not unseasoned writers, who direct us to what we don’t know that we need to know.
Mort Rosenblum has reported from seven continents as Associated Press special correspondent, edited the International Herald Tribune in Paris, and written 14 books on subjects ranging from global geopolitics to chocolate. He now runs MortReport.org.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
The Gold Spa is reflected in a window after deadly shootings at three day spas, in Atlanta, Georgia. (photo: Dustin Chambers/Reuters)
The Washington Post Editorial Board | The Atlanta Shootings Cannot Be Dismissed as Someone Having a 'Bad Day'
The Washington Post Editorial Board
OURS AFTER a 21-year-old White man purchased a gun on Tuesday, authorities said, he went on a shooting spree in the Atlanta area that killed eight people, most of them women of Asian descent. The question that investigators are trying to answer is why. Was it, as many members of the Asian American community believe, racial bigotry? Crimes of opportunity? Or, as the alleged shooter is reported to have told police, the result of a supposed sex addiction that led him to target spas? No matter the answer, the events in Georgia stand as yet another terrible reminder of the epidemic of gun violence in this country that for far too long has gone neglected.
Robert Aaron Long, arrested following a brief search, is accused of opening fire at three spas in the Atlanta area, killing eight people and wounding a ninth. Six of the people killed were Asian, and two were White. All but one were women. Identified so far: Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33; Xiaojie Yan, 49; Daoyou Feng, 44 and Paul Andre Michels, 54. That police were able to make a quick arrest is a credit to the collaboration of different police agencies, critical cooperation from the suspect’s family and the reach of social media. According to authorities, the suspect was headed to Florida and intent on more violence.
The shootings occurred as there has been an alarming rise in discrimination, harassment and attacks of Asians. Stop AAPI Hate, a group that has collected first-hand accounts of discrimination and xenophobia against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, this week reported nearly 3,800 hate-related incidents from March 2020 through February 2021. It connects the attacks to racist rhetoric, including from former president Donald Trump, that suggests Chinese people are to blame for the pandemic.
Authorities said preliminary information indicates the killings may not have been a racially motivated hate crime but stressed it is still too early to know a motive. “Whatever the motivation was for this guy, we know that the majority of the victims were Asian,” said Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, “We also know that this is an issue that is happening across the country. It is unacceptable, it is hateful and it has to stop.”
We agree. But the same things need to be said about the gun violence that kills nearly 40,000 Americans each year. When arrested, Mr. Long had a 9mm gun that authorities said was purchased earlier in the day. Details of the purchase — and whether it was legal — were not disclosed. Capt. Jay Baker of the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office said Mr. Long took responsibility for the shootings and characterized the spas as a “temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate.” He added, “Yesterday was a really bad day for him, and this is what he did.”
Really? Have we become so nonchalant about gun violence that we rack up the murder of eight people to someone having a “bad day?” Just as the coronavirus represents a public health emergency requiring scientific solutions and government action, so gun violence is a public health crisis that demands attention and action to put in place common-sense safety laws.
Holly McCormack said of Greene: 'People are tired of the rhetoric and the division, and people are hungry for a real person who treats people well.' (photo: YouTube)
The Democratic Woman Seeking to Unseat Republican Extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene
David Smith, Guardian UK
Smith writes: "America's midterm elections may be 20 months in the future, but a campaign is already under way to unseat the extremist Republican congresswoman and Donald Trump devotee."
Democrat Holly McCormack is ready to take on the Trump devotee in 2022 – but it’s no easy task in a deep-red Georgia district
’m taking on the queen of Qanon: Marjorie Taylor Greene,” reads one tweet from Holly McCormack. “Retweet if you think Marjorie Taylor Greene is an embarrassment to our country,” says another.
America’s midterm elections may be 20 months in the future, but a campaign is already under way to unseat the extremist Republican congresswoman and Donald Trump devotee. In a rural district of Georgia that Taylor Greene won with three-quarters of the vote last November, no one thinks it is going to be easy.
But McCormack, 36, an insurance agent, singer-songwriter and Democrat, thinks her opponent’s far-right shock tactics have run their course. “People are sick of it,” she told the Guardian. “People are tired of the rhetoric and the division, and people are hungry for a real person who treats people well, and actually shows empathy with action and not words. She claims to be a Christian and then she shows us with her actions the hate.”
Taylor Greene, 46, has been throwing procedural wrenches in the works of Congress since she was stripped of her committee assignments last month for antisemitic and other inflammatory statements.
She has previously made comments on social media supporting the QAnon conspiracy movement, suggesting mass shootings were staged by gun control activists and proposing a Jewish cabal started a deadly California wildfire with a laser beam directed from outer space. And last month she posted an anti-transgender sign across the hall from a congresswoman who has a transgender child.
McCormack’s social media sorties appear to have caught her attention. On Wednesday the Democrat tweeted a screenshot showing Taylor Greene had blocked her on Twitter, asking: “Was it something I said, Marjorie?”
She commented: “It’s mind-boggling how many people she’s attacked, from school shooting survivors to the LGBTQ community to Jewish space lasers. Those are real people behind all of these attacks that are just spewing out of her continually. My team can’t keep up and it zones me out to read too much of it.
“It’s honestly dangerous for our democracy. It’s not just for Georgia 14th; this is important for the country that we get rid of someone that is sowing so much hate and so much division. If we’re going to get better as a country, we’re going to have to stop the right versus left nonsense and see each other as people and as Americans first.”
For McCormack, the daughter of an army veteran, the turning point was the deadly insurrection by Trump supporters at the US Capitol on 6 January. “That was the day that I quit kicking around running and I said, I’ve got to do this. We have to do this.
“I’ve got two teenagers and the representation that we’re having is unacceptable. It’s just horrible and it doesn’t represent how I was raised, how I’m raising my kids. I really hammered into them since they were born to be kind and how you treat people matters and that they should fight for other people. They should stand up if something’s wrong and so, even though it’s hard, it’s the right the right thing to do.”
McCormack regrets the political tribalism that means the first question asked is whether someone is Democratic or Republican. She added: “People are wanting healing, and they’re wanting to be able to get along with their neighbours again, and they’re wanting to not have families broken apart over this. It’s not OK, and I think people are ready for a refreshing change.”
McCormack, who argues that rural areas like hers have been left behind by noisy politicians, will not have a clear run for her party’s nomination as several so-far unnamed Democrats have filed to run in 2022, according to Federal Election Commission records. The odds against any of them in this ruby red district are daunting, but McCormack finds inspiration in Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock’s victories in January’s Senate runoffs.
Her career as a musician – she last released an album in 2012 and a single in 2014 – also offers a chance to stand out from the crowd. “It’s acoustic, folky – chick-rock is the best way to say it,” she laughed. “I should have been of age recording music in the 90s and I would have fit right in. We’re looking forward to some creative fundraising and festivals during the summer.”
Among the songs that McCormack has written, her favorite is Fire. Should she unseat Taylor Green in November 2022, the headline will write itself.
U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona speaks at the White House on Wednesday. (photo: Andrew Harnik/AP)
Education Dept. Begins Rolling Back Trump-Era Policies on Defrauded Students
Cory Turner, NPR
Turner writes:
he U.S. Department of Education announced Thursday it is scrapping a controversial formula, championed by former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, that granted only partial student loan relief to borrowers who were defrauded by private, for-profit colleges. It will instead adopt what it's calling a "streamlined approach" for granting borrowers full relief.
In a call with reporters, a senior official said the department had reviewed the DeVos-era formula "and determined it was not granting an appropriate level of relief to borrowers," given clear evidence they had been defrauded. The senior official said the formula relied on math that made it "very difficult if not impossible" for some borrowers to qualify for full relief.
The department estimates the change would ultimately help approximately 72,000 borrowers who have had their claims approved, but who received less than full relief under the previous formula — and that they will receive a combined $1 billion in loan cancellation.
The change revolves around a provision in federal law, commonly known as Borrower Defense, that allows borrowers who believe they have been cheated by a college or university to apply to have their debts erased. During the Obama administration, the Education Department approved thousands of claims from former students of Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institute.
One department memo from the last days of Obama's presidency begins: "Corinthian Colleges, Inc. ('Corinthian') consistently represented that all graduates obtained jobs after graduation or, relatedly, that its students were guaranteed employment after graduation. These representations were false and misleading. Accordingly, the Borrower Defense Unit recommends full relief for Corinthian borrower defense (BD) applicants."
Another memo, dated Jan. 10, 2017, arrived at the same conclusion for California-based students who alleged they were lied to by ITT Technical Institute, and likewise recommended full relief.
But DeVos criticized the department's old approach to Borrower Defense for being too generous and unveiled the partial-relief formula in December 2019. The formula compared the earnings of Borrower Defense applicants to the earnings of graduates from similar school programs; if the earnings were similar, DeVos' department argued, borrowers were not ultimately harmed by a school's deception. This approach, DeVos said at the time, "treats students fairly and ensures that taxpayers who did not go to college or who faithfully paid off their student loans do not shoulder student loan costs for those who didn't suffer harm."
In a statement, DeVos' successor at the department, Miguel Cardona, made clear he sees things differently: "A close review of these claims and the associated evidence showed these borrowers have been harmed and we will grant them a fresh start from their debt."
The department has also pledged to restore borrowers' eligibility for federal student aid and to petition credit bureaus on behalf of borrowers to remove related negative credit reporting.
Thursday's announcement is likely just the first step of many the department will take to roll back the previous administration's changes to Borrower Defense, policies that are also being challenged in court.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, leads a 2019 press conference with fellow Democrats in support of the Violence Against Women Act. (photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
Outrage as 172 Republicans Vote to Oppose Violence Against Women Act
Maroosha Muzaffar, The Independent
Muzaffar writes:
House of Representatives votes through bill to reauthorise Violence Against Women Act day after Atlanta spa shootings
ne day after seven women were killed in attacks across three massage parlours in Atlanta, Georgia, the US House of Representatives voted to reauthorise the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).
The act, according to the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV), “creates and supports comprehensive, cost-effective responses to domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence and stalking.”
The act was originally authored by the now-president Joe Biden, but had lapsed two years ago.
Representatives voted 244 to 172 in favour of the bill, largely along party lines, though 29 Republicans joined the Democrats in supporting its passage.
NNEDV, in a press release, said that it “applauds the bill’s lead sponsors, Representatives Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), and Jerry Nadler (D-NY), and all those who voted for VAWA’s passage.”
Deborah Vagins, president of NNEDV, said it was a vote “to support survivors... that both maintains established protections and resources and expands VAWA to address ongoing gaps in the law”.
“The pandemic continues to reveal deep racial and gender inequalities that impact survivors’ lives and jeopardise their safety,” she added. The VAWA addresses the needs of historically marginalised survivors in a number of critical ways, she said.
According to The Hill, among other things, the act will end the so-called “boyfriend loophole”, where spouses convicted of domestic violence are banned from owning guns but non-married partners and ex-partners are not.
Ms Vagins said the bill “builds on the progress that has been made for survivors, but acknowledges there is much more to be done to prevent violence, address abuse, and ensure safety. The bill takes a comprehensive approach, addressing the complex realities of survivors’ lives. We celebrate the House bill and urge the Senate to swiftly pass it.”
One user on Twitter also thanked lawmakers who voted for the VAWA reauthorisation. “My daughter’s ex-husband was financially abusive to her during their marriage. She’s fortunate that she had a godfather & extended family who could support her as she left the marriage. Obviously, not all women are that blessed. So, TY for your advocacy,” she said.
While the bill’s passage in the House was celebrated, there was also a widespread reaction to the fact that so many lawmakers chose to vote against the bill.
One social media, Jake Lobin, whose bio identifies him as a “devout Democrat”, tweeted” “172 Republicans voted against renewing the Violence Against Women Act today because they see no problem with violence against women.”
Another user blasted the Republicans for having “no redeeming qualities”, and others accused the party of not caring for the safety of women in the country.
Many also celebrated the reauthorisation of VAWA.
President Biden welcomed the bill’s passage, adding: “I urge the Senate to follow their lead to renew and strengthen this landmark law.
“Writing and passing VAWA is one of the legislative accomplishments of which I’m most proud. VAWA has transformed the way our country responds to violence against women,” he said.
The 'Freedom Bus' that is part of an anti-transgender campaign drives through Santiago, Chile, on July 10, 2017. (photo: Koji Kurukawa/Fundacion Iguales)
Chile: Aggressions on LGTBI People Climb to Record Numbers
teleSUR
Excerpt: "Chile's Homosexual Integration and Liberation Movement (MOVILH) on Wednesday warned of the increase in homophobia and transphobia levels as 1,266 abuse cases against the LGBTI community were reported in 2020."
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Agriculture makes up about 10 percent of emissions in the U.S. (photo: iStock)
Scientists Say Feeding Cows Seaweed Could Cut Their Methane Emissions 82 Percent
Joseph Guzman, The Hill
Guzman writes:
Agriculture makes up about 10 percent of emissions in the U.S.
eeding cattle just a tiny bit of seaweed each day could help the agriculture industry significantly cut back on greenhouse gas emissions.
Agriculture makes up about 10 percent of emissions in the U.S., with about half of that portion coming from cattle that belch and release methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and other gases as they digest grass and hay.
While that has led to a push by conservationists to urge people to eat less meat to help reduce emissions, scientists from the University of California, Davis focused on animal nutrition to try and find a solution.
Researchers behind a study published in PLOS ONE this week added small amounts of seaweed to the diet of 21 beef cattle over the duration of five months and tracked their methane emissions and weight gain. The cows ate from an open-air container that measured the methane in their breath four times a day.
The study found cattle that consumed 3 ounces of seaweed daily gained as much as their herd mates and released 82 percent less methane into the atmosphere.
“We now have sound evidence that seaweed in cattle diet is effective at reducing greenhouse gases and that the efficacy does not diminish over time,” Ermias Kebreab, director of the World Food Center and agricultural scientists at University of California, Davis, said.
A type of seaweed called Asparagopsis taxiformis counteracts emissions from cows by inhibiting an enzyme in the animal’s digestive system that contributes to the production of methane.
Separate research from Kebreab and his Ph.D. graduate student Breanna Roque in 2018 found a 50 percent drop in emissions from dairy cows who were fed seaweed for just two weeks. A taste test also found no differences in the flavor of beef or milk from seaweed-fed steers.
Researchers note there is currently not enough of the seaweed available in the wild for broad use and are looking into ways farmers could produce the seaweed on a large scale.
“There is more work to be done, but we are very encouraged by these results,” Roque said. “We now have a clear answer to the question of whether seaweed supplements can sustainably reduce livestock methane emissions and its long term effectiveness.”
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