Cows can eat seaweed — and maybe always have, study finds

Economically, there's still no reason to believe cattle feed will contain any significant amount of seaweed. But it could.

According to new research led by Canada's Lethbridge Research and Development Center, inland cattle that had never encountered seaweed had no trouble digesting the red seaweed Mazzaella japonica when small amounts were added to their diets. Bacteria that specialize in digesting seaweed appeared within the ruminal microbiome essentially “overnight” — likely because small populations of these bacteria were already present in the rumen before the diet changed, according to Wade Abbott, a senior research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Lethbridge.