NEWS: First VR slaughterhouse robots, now methane masks to capture cow burps receive funding from the Prince of Wales. It’s yet another bizarre day in the weird world of meat industry technology.

Yesterday we reported on VR-controlled slaughterhouse robots, and today there’s yet more bizarre agricultural technology news as Prince Charles and former Apple design chief Jony Ive gave their nods of approval to a mask for cows that captures planet-warming methane gas. 

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard about such ideas, but bovine mask designer ZELP was one of four winners of the Terra Carta Design Lab announced on April 26, according to Bloomberg. But both the prince and Ive awarded £50,000 to ZELP as part of the Prince of Wales’ Sustainable Markets Initiative.

The award was set up to showcase “innovative solutions to the climate crisis”. How selling cow face wear to farmers is productive is a mystery, when we could just stop farming cows and award the money to plant-based innovations. 

While the masks, according to reports, may reduce methane emissions from cow burps by 50 per cent, they don’t address the many other environmental impacts of cow farming including land and water usage, emissions related to the provision of supplementary feed, and farm run-off polluting waterways.

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In short, the masks are little more than a band-aid to reduce one negative impact among many. Let’s not forget that the cows also fart, so will ZELP - which stands for Zero Emissions Livestock Project - also develop bum masks?

Readers expecting masks to fall by the wayside as a pipedream may be dismayed to learn that ZELP co-founder Francisco Norris expects a commercial launch of his masks in 2023 after the design has been finalised. With agricultural giant Cargill - named the worst company in the world by Mighty Earth - The plan is to flog the masks to farmers in Europe first of all as a subscription-per-cow service.

Cow burp masks join the list of crackpot “innovations” aimed at reducing the environmental destruction caused by animal agriculture, and specifically, dairy and beef cow farming. The National Farmers Union (NFU) ‘net-zero 2050’ roadmap puts many of its hopes in such things as seaweed-based feed additives.

The use of seaweed additives somewhat contradicts the farming industry’s claims that cows are mostly grass-fed when such additives would have to be given to cows via supplementary feed - which of course carries its own environmental burden thereby negating any benefits from seaweed.

Andrew Gough is Media and Investigations Manager for Surge.

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