rumen

“The digestive tract, or rumen, basically requires movement. There has to be things moving out of that rumen constantly in order for the pH balance and microbiome to stay where it should be,” he said.

"It's a real possibility," says Mizrahi, an expert on rumen biology.

The goal is to develop an oral treatment for calves that, once administered, will continue repopulating their rumen with the genetically modified microflora.

Because cows can’t readily digest the grass they eat, they ferment it first in multiple stomach compartments, or rumen, a process that releases huge amounts of gas.

Ruminant livestock - cattle, sheep, bison, goats, deer and camels - have a stomach compartment called the rumen in which microbes produce methane as a byproduct of digesting fibrous plant material.