Farm animals may soon eat food made from natural gas

All the food you've ever eaten is produced by sunlight captured by plants months or years before you ate it However, with the introduction of the fossil fuel fed livestock project, some of the energy on your plate may soon come from the sunlight captured by plants millions of years ago Calysta, a biotech company based in Menlo Park, California, will announce the first large-scale plant to use microbes to turn natural gas (methane) into high protein food for animals The plant, to be jointly built by calysta and Cargill, a food giant, is expected to produce 200000 tons of feed a year Food made of methane has been approved by the European Union for feeding farmed fish, pigs and other livestock Calysta is seeking approval in the U.S for more than just farm animals "We want it to be food for cats, dogs and even humans." Alan Shaw, head of the company, said The process relies on methane eating microbes These methanotrophic methane oxidizing bacteria "burn" methane for energy and produce carbon dioxide and water as byproducts Later, some of that energy is used to combine with other methane molecules to produce more complex carbon molecules - in other words, food This ability first evolved billions of years ago - probably before photosynthesis Nowadays, methane oxidizing bacteria can be found everywhere from cold springs to ponds and swamps under the sea Calysta uses a bacterium called mycococcus capsulatum The bacteria are raised in vats, feed on methane, and are then dried and turned into pellets The idea was first proposed by Statoil, a Norwegian state-owned oil company, in the 1980s At the beginning of this century, the company established a factory that can produce 10000 tons of feed per year However, at that time, the price of natural gas was high and the product was not approved in the EU As a result, the plant was shut down and the technology was sold to calysta.