Can Oregano Fight Cow Belches — And Climate Change?

Cows are notoriously gassy creatures. Globally, more than a third of methane generated by human activity comes from livestock farming, a good deal of it in the form of bovine belching (yes, belching — not the other end). This is a serious problem, given that methane is 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at trapping heat.Enter a Danish research team that is testing out one potential solution in the form of an unassuming herb: oregano."Oregano has essential oils with a mild antimicrobial called carvacrol, which can kill some of the bacteria in the cow's rumen that produce methane," explains Kai Grevsen, a senior researcher at Aarhus University who specializes in crop science. "Of course, you can't kill all of the bacteria, or the cow would die." Reining in cow burps is an issue that agricultural scientists have been working on for years, and there are some other promising solutions. For example, a team at Penn State has reported that adding the chemical 3-nitrooxypropanol (3NOP)