Mr. Dale Crammond:

I thank the Senator for the question. As Mr. Callanan has outlined, the area of methane reducing feed additives is incredibly important for the sector in the achievement of its targets.

Given what we are seeing at the moment, with the first feed additive, which contains the 3-NOP chemical, 3-nitrooxypropanoal, having gone through the European Food Safety Authority, we expect this feed additive to be commercially available in Ireland later this year. This will be targeted over the winter housing period initially. When the animals are indoors we would be able to feed that continually to our animals. The challenge then is to take that 3-NOP product and develop a slow-release bolus for it that we can deliver to animals when they are put out to pasture over the grazing period throughout the year. One of the ways we can target this is when the animals come in for milking in the morning. We would be able to feed this to the animal through a slow-release bolus, and then continually do that over the grazing period. The expectation is that this product is still a couple of years away from market. We probably do not envisage this before 2024 or 2025. It is coming, but in the short term the focus will be on the housed animals over the winter. It was identified in the climate action plan that this would be expected to make a contribution.