In 2016, in the wake of the Paris Agreement, we set out to tell the world something it was not ready to hear: that the largest near-term lever to slow warming was the methane the world’s 1.5 billion ruminants release into the atmosphere — and that a natural feed supplement could move it. The science, we found, was the easier half. The harder half was who would pay. The farmer could not. A farmer asked to bear the cost of solving a planetary problem will, reasonably, refuse. Whoever was going to make this work had to invent the economics first.
That question — how do you finance a solution when the market for it does not yet exist? — became Mootral’s obsession.
We started with garlic and citrus, born of Neem Biotech’s research in Wales. Applied to the rumen, those bioactives reduced enteric methane by up to 38% in live cattle and improved animal productivity in parallel — more milk, better fermentation, fewer flies, lower mastitis. Methane intensity per litre of milk fell sharply, and that — not absolute methane — is the number that matters for the planet. Enterix™ was validated at UC Davis under Professor Ermias Kebreab, at Purdue, at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Hannover, at Scotland’s Rural College, and at the University of Aberystwyth, with results published in leading peer-reviewed scientific journals.
We did not stop there. Curiosity and ambition pulled us into the most comprehensive, technology-agnostic discovery programme the field has seen. We screened billions of synthetic molecules and selected highly promising new candidates. We found novel ways to safely deploy organohalogens. We identified and enhanced proprietary methanophages. We refined synergistic blends that pointed toward the near-complete eradication of enteric methane in ruminants.
In December 2019, Mootral became the first company in the world to have a methodology approved under Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard for the reduction of enteric methane in livestock — VM0041, the first of its kind, anywhere. Sixteen months later, the first carbon credits ever issued for cattle methane reduction were generated through that methodology — a UK dairy project verified for an annual reduction of 187,563 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent.
The mechanism around the CowCredit worked like this. Companies and governments under pressure to cut their carbon inventories bought premium, hyperlocal credits from audited methane reductions on real farms. The proceeds flowed back to the farmer as a subsidy on the supplement. The farmer, who could not be asked to pay, was paid. Brands attached climate-smart credentials to their milk and beef. Everyone who benefited from the methane reduction paid a fair share. The CowCredit was the enabling instrument; the mechanism was the architecture around it.
CowCredits sold at €70 a tonne, later rising to €80 — significant multiples above forestry credits, which traded for a fraction of that — because the market understood what they were: not a promise of future sequestration, but a verified, audited reduction that had already happened. They became eligible under CORSIA, the United Nations scheme for aviation offsets. In a voluntary carbon market plagued by credibility issues, CowCredits set a different bar.
What grew from this was real, and it travelled. The world’s first climate-smart milk reached the shelf — Brades Farm Barista Milk, produced in Lancashire by the Towers family, served at GAIL’s and at specialist coffee shops across the United Kingdom. The New York Times placed Mootral on the front page of its Sunday Business section. Bloomberg, The Times of London, CNN, Fast Company, Sifted, Euronews, the BBC, and WIPO Magazine all carried the story. One outlet, in a phrase that travelled further than we could have engineered, called us “the Tesla of cows.” Lowercarbon Capital invested. King Philanthropies led our Series A. A documentary was made about the work.
On the back of all of this, an entire industry emerged. Other companies followed, using our learnings, our proof points, our trail. We take pride in that. The category exists today because somebody had to be first, and we were.
None of us did this for fame or acclaim. We did it because the problem was real, the window narrow, and the chance to build something the world genuinely needed was rare. We gave everything we had — our time, our energy, our money, and in some cases our health — and we worked at climate speed, because that was the speed the problem demanded.
We were, in the end, too early. The market we set out to build had not yet caught up — not for us, not for any other company in the category. We had the solutions. What had not yet arrived was the market that was needed to pay for them.
The science remains. The methodology endures, and continues to be refined. The path is mapped. When the world is ready to walk it, the work will be there, waiting.