© Off-Guardian
We published an article last week on
"Bovaer", the chemical compound, currently being trialled in the UK, which is
added to cow feed to reduce methane emissions (allegedly).Since then the story has grown, and I just wanted to do a quick update and ask a question that's nagging at me, but we'll get to that.
Firstly the good news - the widespread disgust. People all over the country have objected to the "low emission" drug, leading to boycotts of the dairy giant Arla and their associated brands.Social media users are posting pictures of stacked shelves of unsold Lurpak butter and Cravendale milk.
Smaller farms and organic dairy producers have jumped on the chance for good publicity and released statements declaring themselves "Bovaer free" (Some people have
made lists)
Some are even
taking potshots and Bill Gates, which is always fun.
The BBC has turned Marianna Spring loose to
do a fact-check, and
"experts" have reassured her that Bovaer is safe...which was pretty much always going to happen.
A stranger development can be found in
The Daily Mail, which has run a few stories on this issue, including
publishing a full list of all the products Arla is involved with to enable boycotts.
Why would they do that? Appeasing their audience? Hopping on the bandwagon?
Perhaps.
But there's more. The story isn't actually new, Bovaer was approved by the UK government
back in December of 2023 and was already being trialled by Marks & Spencer in
April of this year.
So why the big fuss now, a year later?
Comment: This development has received little media attention in the West, naturally, because it happened in Russia, so we looked into the basis of the claim.
The Russian developers are turning cancerous mutations into antigens so that the immune system can attack them better. This technique has apparently worked in animal studies. They're starting trials on humans with super-aggressive melanomas and small cell lung cancer, where the prognosis is already very bad. Each vaccine is individualized to the patient. They do use mRNA technology, but this might prove to be the best use for such. In the animal studies, the vaccine regressed or cured animals from metastasis and terminal cancer.
So the principle behind it is to reinforce the immune system by 'teaching' it to attack the cancer rather than 'feed' it or accept it as 'normal'.
More in this India Times report about how AI-based 'neural network computing' will be used to 'create a personalized cancer vaccine in 30 minutes'. See also the press release.