Dr. Frank Mitloehner:

We have done research at the University of California, Davis, comparing animal-sourced foods with plant-based alternatives. It is a very complex issue. For the most part, plant-based alternatives have a relatively lower carbon footprint simply because there is an addition at appropriate levels to animal-sourced foods. There is not much discussion about that. There are other environmental impact categories, however, where the plant-based alternatives are performing lower. Energy consumption, for example, is, in many cases, higher. Nutrient equivalency is not the same. Even though some of the plant-based alternatives might have the same percentage of protein, most animal-sourced foods come with a package of multiple essential nutrients. The Senator mentioned some of them, including iron, selenium and vitamin B12. Many of those are very digestible and valuable to human nutrition. There has been a lot of exaggeration in respect of advertising for those plant-based alternatives. There is room for them but it remains relatively small. I do not think there is any major change in nutrition percentages in animal-based versus plant-based foods.

With respect to the Senator's question on mitigation approaches for Ireland, as I mentioned in my written comments and in what I read to the committee, where Ireland is so different is that the country largely has a pastoral animal agricultural sector. Many other developed countries do not. In California, we have little in the way of pastoral systems. Most animals are in free stall barns and other barns. The manure goes into collection areas. Ireland, by and large, has manure that is deposited on the land and on pasture. It is incorporated into the soil. Manure is not stored as much here and it is not being managed as much. The main emission source from Irish animal agriculture is enteric methane, that is, the methane belched out.

Ireland is in a lucky situation compared with the United States, where we are not allowed to self-feed additives that lay claim to reducing methane, because Irish farmers can. Ireland has several tools at its disposal that have been shown in peer-reviewed, published research to reduce enteric methane. The question Irish researchers have to figure out is how to get these additives into animals that are normally grazing. For example, a dairy cow that is milked every day could be fed an additive in addition to the concentrate she consumes while being milked. There are other approaches. Reductions in enteric emissions would be very important in the Irish context because they constitute the majority of the carbon footprint of the Irish herd. Ireland has an advantage and will reach its goals faster than we have been doing this year because its focus should be on enteric.