(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) A startup company called ArkeaBio has raised more than $26 million in seed money to combat the perceived danger of cow farts, Feedstuffs reported.
ArkeaBio is an agricultural biotechnology startup. The company plans to develop a vaccine for cows that reduces their total flatulence, in turn leading to less methane released into the atmosphere.
According to the report, the cow jab will create a more efficient “solution” to the problem of cows farting—or belching, which also produces large amounts of the methane gas generated via the rumination process for their cud.
Chris Rivest, the chairman of ArkeaBio’s board, said that by using large-scale pharmaceutical procedures, corporations would be able to alter cows’ natural responses to food and digestion.
“Reducing methane emissions from the agricultural sector is one of the most pressing challenges in today’s fight against climate change,” Rivest said in a press release, suggesting that the new technology will be effective particularly for mass-scale production.
“ArkeaBio’s approach using innovative vaccine technologies will create effective and massively scalable solutions to reduce on-farm methane emissions, leaving them well-positioned to redefine the agricultural landscape in the years to come.”
While the focus of its effort was on reducing livestock emissions—of which cows may be considered the greatest offender—the company did not indicate whether any research was being done to see if the vaccine might also be effective at reducing human flatulence or that of any other species, potentially adding to its market value.
Instead, the company was laser-focused on its objective of using the research specifically to addresss the problem of climate change.
Making the treatment available to humans could potentially risk a supply crisis that might drive up costs and turn it into little more than a moneymaking endeavor, just as other vaccines have become in recent memory.
With a problem as dire as global warming, there was little time to spare,” noted ArkeaBio CEO Colin South.
“We are thankful for the financial support, confidence, and trust of our investors,” South said. “This funding will accelerate the development of our vaccine-based solution to meet a pressing global problem.”
South said climate change presented an existential crisis, calling it “the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced” and “the race of our lives.”
As such, he has dedicated his life to eliminating cow farts by way of pharmaceutical intervention.
“This capital raise allows us to continue to create the tools necessary for farmers to achieve globally relevant reductions in livestock methane emissions,” he concluded.
The fascination with slowing cow farts is not a new concern new among climate change activists.
Things have gone so far in New Zealand as to lead to attempts to regulate cow flatulence at the behest of Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum, and will doubtless continue to gain traction in America as well.
