The MooBlue Team Keeps The Beef, Without The Burp

Cattle are one of the most consequential climate problems hiding in plain sight on the dinner table. Livestock are responsible for roughly 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, and cattle alone account for about 65% of that sector's output. Most of it doesn't come from manure or land use — it comes from inside the cow. Approximately one billion cattle on the planet burp around 3.7 gigatons of CO₂-equivalent emissions annually, more than the aviation and shipping industries combined.A growing number of researchers and companies are focused on a deceptively simple approach: change what a cow eats. A red seaweed called Asparagopsis taxiformis contains bromoform, a compound that blocks the enzymes used by methane-producing microbes in the rumen. Today's guests didn't learn about this from a graduate seminar. They're high school students, and they built an idea for their first company around it. Every January, I judge a Shark Tank-style competition that caps a month-long entrepreneurship program at the Bush School in Seattle. This year, a pitch by three students stopped me cold. Zara, Ellie, and Kai Aizawa are the co-founders of MooBlue, whose tagline — Cut the burp, keep the beef — got a laugh, but whose business concept is entirely serious. Kai is heading to Haverford College in the fall. Zara and Ellie are still freshmen.MooBlue proposes harvesting Asparagopsis from the Mediterranean, where it is an invasive species currently harming marine ecosystems, processing it into an oil-based feed additive and building a certification and labeling system so consumers can identify beef and dairy products raised using reduced-methane feeds. What struck me wasn't just the idea. It was the depth of the research: from the biochemistry of rumen fermentation to the intellectual property landscape to a two-segment go-to-market strategy targeting large corporate operations and family farms. They covered the competitive white space, the supply chain, the financial incentives for farmers, and the consumer psychology of premium labeling, all with the ease of people who had genuinely internalized what they were talking about.The conversation shows that the internet has exploded ceiling of what a curious teenager can discover. When Zara, Ellie, and Kai needed to understand the biochemistry of enteric fermentation, they found recent, peer-reviewed research. When I was their age, those journals would have been available only at a university library, if they existed at all. Today, a high school freshman in Seattle can find a paper out of, understand the biochemistry well enough to explain it clearly, and build a company around the discovery. That changes what a generation can imagine. And it may change what we can collectively accomplish.You can learn more about the Bush School's entrepreneurship program at bush.edu.Subscribe to Sustainability In Your Ear on iTunesFollow Sustainability In Your Ear on Spreaker, iHeartRadio, or YouTube