We saw this rather eye-catching headline on messaging groups and social media platforms such as X this week. According to the claim, a start-up has raised $26.5 million for an “anti-fart” vaccine to be used on cows.Posts about this claim have suggested that this vaccine will be a sneaky way to introduce harmful substances into the humans who eat the vaccinated, “tainted” cows – or that the vaccine will end up killing cow herds across the world.

We first looked up the article which has been screenshot and circulated (although not linked) in the widely spread claim posts. The short article seems to confirm that a Bill Gates-founded foundation, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, is a major investor in ArkeaBio, a start-up which aims to reduce livestock methane emissions.

Methane is a greenhouse gas that contributes to the formation of ground level ozone. According to the International Energy Agency, it is responsible for around 30% of the rise in global temperatures since the industrial revolution. Around 40% of methane emissions are from natural sources, while 60% are from human activity – with agriculture (for instance raising livestock or rice farming) being the major contributor.

According to statistics from 2022, there are over 1 billions cows on the planet – which makes the fact that a single cow can produce 70 to 120kg of methane a year a significant issue. This has been brought up regularly in international forums such as COP28 and given more concentrated focus in initiatives such as the Global Methane Pledge.The fact that cows produce methane through their digestive processes (expelled through burping and farting and manure) has long been in the cultural consciousness. However, the use of vaccines as a solution is fairly new. A lot of work has been done in tandem to find different solutions to the growing issue of methane emissions from cows – such as through selectively breeding cows to produce less methane and developing special feed that reduces the occurrence of methane in the digestive system.

According to a recent press release, ArkeaBio is focused on vaccine technologies as the solution because it is scalable, relatively low cost, and would be easily adopted across different farming systems and types of livestock (such as sheep). Statements from the company also suggest that the vaccine in still in R&D, and that an actual vaccine rollout is still years in the making.

Therefore, the claim being circulated is true.

A start-up is planning to make “anti-fart” (among other methods of gas release) vaccines for cows to reduce methane emissions. However, understanding the context is important – for instance that methane emissions from cows are a long-standing, established issue, and that vaccines have been mooted as a solution since at least 2015. It is also important to look a bit further past the simplified headlines (“anti-fart”) to get a fuller picture.

A great deal of the responses and accompanying insinuations about the vaccine being a ploy to taint human meat or dairy supplies appear to be pure, unfounded speculation – leaning on existing fears over vaccines and Bill Gates to frame the claim a certain way. The tactic of using intentionally inflammatory descriptions and language also serves to muddy the waters. It is therefore doubly important to be cautious when coming across such claims – both to avoid being misled into believing the speculation and to miss out on getting a more complete and accurate picture of the truth.