Cows in the Isle of Man are to be fed kippers as part of the fight against climate change.
The move follows research carried out at the University of Dublin which shows that fish oil can help reduce the amount of wind produced by animals.
Animal flatulence accounts for more than a third of the world's methane emissions and the work in Dublin has shown that adding fish oil to a cow's diet can reduce emissions per cow by a volume equivalent to the amount of gas contained in the ill-fated R101 airship.
Agriculture Minister Phil Gawne says trials with Arbroath smokies in Scotland and a finnan haddock based scheme with pigs have had little success, so he is delighted the "kippers for cows scheme" seems to be reducing the Island's bovine gaseous emission quota in line with the Kyoto agreement.
He told Manx Radio:
"This is a very important initiative which has just been announced by the department.
"We are absolutely delighted with the research, which clearly shows there is very strong scientific evidence that feeding kippers to livestock significantly reduces the amount of methane produced by the animals.
"I think this really shows that the Isle of Man is going to be in a groundbreaking position.
"We've managed to keep this reasonably quiet up to this point, because obviously there are a number of our competitors in surrounding jurisdictions that could potentially be taking this really exciting initiative away from us.
"So we are going to be world leaders on this one."
Members of the public won't notice any difference in the countryside other than a slightly more smoky scent to the air.
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