The American Farm Bureau Foundation for Agriculture and its Food and Agriculture Center for Science Education produce a free science curriculum reaching around 1.2m students across more than 100 school districts nationwide. Late last year it announced a new lesson exploring how cattle produce methane and its role within the broader environmental and biological systems. Within months, the lesson was gone.

A new lesson on cattle digestion, published in July, makes no mention of methane or climate, and the original lesson has not come back.

What the lesson said

The removed material, titled "Methane & Cattle: A Climate Connection", drew on figures from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to show that methane is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, though short-lived in the atmosphere.

It was not error-free. Duke climate scientist Drew Shindell found the lesson stated that livestock accounts for about 2% of human-caused methane emissions, when the true figure is a little over 30%.

How the protest unfolded

The backlash began with Jim Mundorf, a rancher and podcaster, who wrote on his blog Lonesome Lands that the methane lesson was one of the most infuriating things he had laid eyes on.

• •Mundorf wrote that blaming cattle for climate change is no different than blaming volcanos, or the oceans, or lightning strikes that cause wildfires.
• •His post was republished by the ranchers coalition of CPAC, the influential conservative group, and amplified across the farming community.
• •Mundorf said he received calls and emails from people involved with farm bureau who were also upset, and that contacts later told him they do not think the lesson will be used anymore.

Among the critics was Brett Kenzy, a South Dakota farmer who chairs a committee of R-CAL USA. He called the lesson a slap in the face.

At CattleCon in February, Rick Henningfeld, the AFBFA education director, told an audience: "We did take it down… We heard the feedback, and we are editing it", adding that the hope was to return it quickly. He confirmed the removal followed feedback from some farm bureau members and some producers, and said a new producer review of everything the program publishes would be developed.

Scientists push back

Shindell, who chaired the UN's 2021 Global Methane Assessment, said the underlying science is settled: "The role of methane in climate change is not controversial, having been measured in the lab long ago" and confirmed by satellite observations. He added it was a shame the ranchers would block students from learning about the world they will inherit.

Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, a climate scientist at IIASA, put a figure on methane's contribution: about 0.3C, roughly 20%, of global warming to date is maintained by ongoing biogenic methane emissions, making cuts to them essential.

Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, framed the episode as a question of whose interests the curriculum serves. "The censorship in the recent episode suggests that the needs of the producers prevail", he said.

The industry's funding and defense

The curriculum is funded by the beef checkoff, a mandatory levy on cattle sales. Officials behind it say the aim is to eliminate negative perceptions of the industry for future consumers. Vivayic, the Nebraska-based consultancy that develops the program, said the goal is for students to make sense of real scientific data.

The foundation defends what happened. A spokesperson said the topic of methane "cannot be a 45-minute lesson"; the foundation is developing a longer version and says the July lesson was not a replacement. Its review process, it says, invites a group of producers to suggest topics and review draft materials.

The policy environment has hardened too. In September, the USDA, which oversees all agricultural checkoff programs, ordered them to end support for environmental, social and governance initiatives as well as net-zero and climate-neutrality targets, and said it had no role in removing the methane lesson.

Animal agriculture advocates argue that the biogenic cycle - in which atmospheric methane breaks down within about 12 years into carbon dioxide that is then reabsorbed by grass - means cattle methane adds little heating.

The methane lesson remains offline. The foundation says it is developing a longer version of the topic, while a new producer review process is being set up for everything the program publishes.