The trick to green meat-eating? Just feed cows seaweed
Exclusive: Radical move for future immigrants
FEEDING cows seaweed could make them more environmentally friendly, scientists claim.
A seaweed snack was found to reduce the amount of methane, a greenhouse gas, that is emitted when cows pass wind.
Methane is up to 84 times more potent at causing global warming than carbon dioxide.
The research means Britons may not have to cut back on eating meat and dairy products to meet the UK’s ‘net zero’ emissions target.
The study found a type of algae, asparagopsis taxiformis, curbed the amount of methane cows produced by inhibiting enzymes in their digestive system that help produce the gas.
Scientists added ‘scant amounts’ of the algae to 21 beef cows’ diets for five months.
The cows were fed four times a day with a device measuring methane in their breath.
Cows that ate 3oz doses of seaweed gained as much weight as others but produced 82 per cent less methane, researchers from the University of California, Davis, found. A test panel also found meat and milk from cows fed on seaweed tasted no different from those on normal diets.
Meat and dairy production makes up around 5 per cent of UK greenhouse emissions.
Professor Ermias Kebreab, author of the study published in journal Plos One, said: ‘This could help farmers sustainably produce the beef and dairy products we need to feed the world.’
ASYLUM seekers crossing the Channel from France to the UK will be sent to a third country under radical plans drawn up by Priti Patel.
The Home Secretary is poised to publish a ‘fair but firm’ shake-up of Britain’s asylum system designed to end illegal Channel crossings.
The plans, to be set out as part of the UK Sovereign Borders Bill, will establish new ‘legal safe routes’ allowing genuine refugees to secure the right to come to the UK directly from war zones.
But the proposals, which constitute the biggest shake-up of asylum laws in a generation, will also mean Britain takes a tougher line on unauthorised immigration.
Migrants will be banned from claiming asylum in the UK if they have arrived from a safe country such as France, with their cases deemed ‘inadmissible’.
Miss Patel is working on plans to allow the swift return of ‘inadmissible’ migrants to the country they came from.
But with EU countries dragging their heels in taking back failed asylum seekers, she is also drawing up proposals for them to have their cases dealt with in a third country, such as Turkey.
Migrants arriving in the UK via illegal routes would be removed to the third country and would remain there until they could be repatriated, either to their home nation or the safe country they arrived from – a process that could take months or years.
A Home Office source said the move was designed to ‘break the link’ between getting in a dinghy or lorry in France and securing a new life in the UK. ‘If people know that they are not going to get to stay in the UK then they are less likely to make that perilous journey,’ the source said.
‘People are dying – we have to break that link, which is what the people smugglers rely on. Yes, it will be controversial with some, but while we have people dying we have to consider everything.’
The Home Office was tightlipped last night about exactly where ‘inadmissible’ asylum seekers might be sent, or how much countries will be paid to take them.
Last year, ministers briefly considered sending asylum seekers to far-flung British dependencies, including St Helena and Ascension Island in the South Atlantic.
The remote islands were rejected as impractical. But the idea of sending asylum seekers offshore for processing has survived.
A similar scheme has been operated by Australia for years.
Asylum seekers travelling by sea have been banned from entering the country, and instead are redirected to accommodation centres in neighbouring states such as Papua New Guinea.
Sources confirmed that several non-EU countries have been sounded out about the idea.
Turkey is thought to be a likely candidate as it already has a multi-billion-pound deal with the EU for hosting millions of migrants who might otherwise have made their way to Europe.
Britain is also in discussions with several EU countries, including Denmark, who are interested in ‘off-shoring’ their own asylum seekers to a third country.
Home Office sources stressed that the idea of sending asylum seekers abroad to be processed will be subject to consultation.
But the proposal is likely to
‘Break link people smugglers rely on’
prove highly controversial with human rights groups, and is certain to face legal challenges.
Although ministers considered pulling out of the 1951 Convention on Refugees they decided against the move. The UK will also remain a signatory of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Campaigners argue that international law does not require refugees to seek asylum in the first safe country they can reach.
But Miss Patel has privately told colleagues she is determined to end the practice of ‘asylum shopping’, where people can travel through a string of safe countries before trying to make the journey across the Channel to the UK.
‘There is no justification for people travelling through safe countries like France in order to claim asylum in the UK,’ a source said.
‘They are not at risk from persecution in France, but they are putting their lives at risk if they try to cross the Channel illegally.’
The plans are due to be published this month and will be included in the UK Sovereign Borders Bill in the summer.
The new measures will also include tougher enforcement action against the people smuggling gangs, including the introduction of life sentences for the worst offenders, up from a current maximum jail term of 14 years.
A separate review to be published today will recommend reforms to the judicial review process to curb the scope for repeated claims in immigration and asylum claims.
However, the plans are likely to take many months, or possibly years, to implement fully.
In the meantime, ministers are braced for the flow of migrants across the Channel to continue.
And there are fears that the controversy surrounding the new plans could spark a surge from migrants desperate to get to the UK before the door is closed.
Internal Home Office projections seen by the Mail forecast an average 500 migrants a month will successfully make the crossing this year.
This would suggest around 6,000 migrants are set to make the crossing this year – lower than the record 8,417 last year but more than the 1,890 in 2019.
‘End practice of asylum shopping’