California’s cattle ranchers contribute a significant amount to the region’s culture, economy and food supply, but do they also inadvertently help to temper the wildfires that have been plaguing the state? And if so, is it a better alternative – environmentally speaking – to letting grasslands burn?

Yanhong Liu, an associate professor of animal nutrition and a member of the CLEAR Center at University of California, Davis (UC Davis), is bolstering the work of the five-year-long international PIG-PARADIGM study currently underway. In addition to lending her well-regarded expertise in animal nutrition and experience gained from her work to reduce antibiotics use in swine, Liu and other faculty from UC Davis are leading a project team of postdoctoral researchers and Ph.D. candidates in nutrition, microbiology and big data analysis.

This news release is based on information communicated by the CDFA.

Several months after the California Department of Food and Agriculture; University of California, Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences; and UC Davis CLEAR Center staged the State of the Science Summit: Feed Strategies to Reduce Enteric Emissions May 2 and 3, 2023, organizers have issued a written report to capsulize some of the information shared at the conference and to encourage others to join them in a spirit of cooperation aim

Among the many challenges facing hog farmers in the United States is the commonly occurring incidence of post-weaning diarrhea. At best, the affliction requires the administration of antibiotics; at worst, it results in the spread of infection among weaned pigs, at times leading to more diarrhea, loss of appetite and even their death.

• California is the leading dairy producer in the United States and is mandated to reduce methane emissions by 40% by 2030.
• Unlike carbon dioxide, which persists for hundreds of years, methane is a short-lived flow gas that warms at a high level for 12 years.
• Scientists at University of Oxford have developed a new metric – known as GWP* – that more accurately depicts the warming potential of methane.
• GWP* can help measure methane’s impact on temperature, which other metrics have been unable to do.

• A new paper published in Animal: The International Journal of Animal Biosciences puts GWP* to the test in real-life scenarios. The authors, all internationally known and well-regarded climate scientists, physicists, animal scientist and air quality specialists, use six case studies to compare GWP* to GWP100 and demonstrate the effect various scenarios may have on global warming using each matrix.

• First work to apply GWP* to sectoral emissions from a North American animal production system.
• Serves as case study for the application of GWP* to smaller industry- and locale-specific CH4 emissions data. 
• GWP* matches the dynamics of warming from declining background CH4 emissions better than GWP-based emissions.

The CLEAR Center at the University of California, Davis has begun a partnership with the National Pork Board (NPB) to further sustainability research and extension in swine production. The CLEAR Center, led by Dr. Frank Mitloehner, leverages world-class research and science communication to improve sustainability in animal agriculture. 

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