Joe McFadden Discusses – Collaboration, the value of existing research, innovative ways of leveraging the energy and passion of students to get the most of Cornell’s new respiratory chambers.
By Ash Sweeting
Livestock sustainability is a much more complex issue than inhibiting methane production. Holistic solutions are needed that also maintain nutrient digestibility, reduce nitrogen pollution, maintain efficiency, are scalable across different production environments in the developed and developing world and are acceptable to the public. After coming to Cornell University in 2017 solving these critical issues have become the core focus of Prof. Joe McFadden.
Cornell is building new climate-controlled respiration chambers, unique to the Unites States, to accelerate their research on livestock methane emissions. Not wanting to reinvent the wheel, Joe’s team is building on research conducted over the last 50 years. His team is planning on using the new chambers to test compounds with proven in vitro methane inhibition data in live animals to determine how they work in North American production systems and other environments across the world.
Joe understand we have to invest in people first and foremost to really drive solutions. A key part of his plans are transitioning to a problems-based approach to sustainability where he is leading efforts across universities, states, and internationally to improve collaboration. To accelerate the approval process for feed additives he is collaborating with an environmental NGO and the FDA to develop new approval methodologies and he has developed a new program to educate both students and the public simultaneously.
I recently caught up with Joe to hear more about his work.
Joe McFadden Discusses – Collaboration, the value of existing research, innovative ways of leveraging the energy and passion of students to get the most of Cornell’s new respiratory chambers.
By Ash Sweeting
Livestock sustainability is a much more complex issue than inhibiting methane production. Holistic solutions are needed that also maintain nutrient digestibility, reduce nitrogen pollution, maintain efficiency, are scalable across different production environments in the developed and developing world and are acceptable to the public. After coming to Cornell University in 2017 solving these critical issues have become the core focus of Prof. Joe McFadden.
Cornell is building new climate-controlled respiration chambers, unique to the Unites States, to accelerate their research on livestock methane emissions. Not wanting to reinvent the wheel, Joe’s team is building on research conducted over the last 50 years. His team is planning on using the new chambers to test compounds with proven in vitro methane inhibition data in live animals to determine how they work in North American production systems and other environments across the world.
Joe understand we have to invest in people first and foremost to really drive solutions. A key part of his plans are transitioning to a problems-based approach to sustainability where he is leading efforts across universities, states, and internationally to improve collaboration. To accelerate the approval process for feed additives he is collaborating with an environmental NGO and the FDA to develop new approval methodologies and he has developed a new program to educate both students and the public simultaneously.
I recently caught up with Joe to hear more about his work.
Joe McFadden Interview
We hear about Joe’s hands on experience researching livestock production and emissions.
AS
Good afternoon, Joe, thank you very much for joining me today.
JM
Thank you Ash for the invitation to come and looking forward to the conversation.
AS
My pleasure, my pleasure. So you're at Cornell, you're doing all your scaling up the work in terms of researching methane production in ruminants. Can you tell me a bit about what you're doing in that Space and what the goals are?
JM
I arrived to Cornell in 2017 and when I arrived I was not a methane guy. I was a guy studying dairy cow biology fundamental perspective. Trying to understand nutrient use and milk synthesis.
When you come to Cornell, you get inspired to explore alternative paths, and I was encouraged to write a USDA grant for a large piece of equipment. That that proposal did not get funded, but it led to opportunities to interact with Cargill and acquire respiration chambers.
These are standalone units that allow for the measure gas exchange, so that's the measurement of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and hydrogen, that's being emitted from the cow and also oxygen consumption, which when combined with the co2 that's being exhaled, you can estimate heat production and that's really important knowledge to have to better define energetic efficiency.
That was a catalyst within Cornell to develop our abilities to study feed additives and drugs that inhibit methane, but do so holistically.
What I mean by that is that there's a lot of research from the last 50 years studying feed additive X,Y & Z. But the focus has been really on one variable most often like looking at methane.
And so what we don't want is we don't want solutions that inhibit methane, which solves one problem, but that creates a different problem. we want to maintain nutrient digestibility. We want to reduce nitrogen sort of excretion. We want to maintain efficiency, and so our approaches that we're sort of working on and we're looking at working on this across the university. But we really want to develop standardized approaches. And so we're working on improving our organization, across people, enhancing our capabilities with equipment and facilities to really do this well. And look at the complete picture if that makes sense.
AS
Okay, and where is that all that one of the one of the priorities in terms of the research and then I guess further down the track in terms of interventions or management practices that can actually be implemented?
JM
Well, you know, where we're at now is to building a respiration chamber system that's going to be fairly, will be unique in the United States. Sounds easy to do. To some, but it does sound easy to me when I first started what you actually sit down with architects and engineers, it actually takes a little bit of time and effort and so those are not expected to be installed until summer 2023. Because we have to renovate a building
AS
to take a little step back. People who aren't familiar with cattle and what a respiration chamber is. Essentially, it's a it's an airtight container that the animal has to live in for certain periods of time that collects all the gas so you it's not a small piece of equipment or non complex piece of or simple piece of equipment.
JM
No it will say it's the you know, it's it's airtight in the sense that you're controlling you know, the air of supply that's going in and you know, the air supply is going out. I mean, you know, the gas concentrations of the air going in and gas concentrations on the air going out, you can control that flow of gas. And so what we're able to do is, yeah, one animal goes in, and that's a cow in this case, but these chambers are going to be adaptable to different species. And so we have come like some of my colleagues work with broilers, they can roll in a whole sort of tower broilers, we can probably put a couple of sheep in there. There's even questions about humans, but we're not there yet. But the thought process is that once you put that animal in a when there, we have to adapt to being in the chamber. Obviously, we're concerned about changes in animal behavior, which is one of the potential sort of concerns about using chambers. That you change an animal's behavior and, and their stress response, but there's ways to acclimate them to that. And so they sort of behave normal. And what we'll do is is that you can also control the climate in there and so we are able to control or we'll be able to control that temperature from 30 degrees Fahrenheit to 105 degrees Fahrenheit, however we want to do it. And so for our heat stress work that's actually really important to have that kind of fine tuned control where you can really program it to look like a typical day in Florida or Arizona or whatever. And we also control the humidity as well. So everything is finely tuned, controlled by the minute and the gas measurements occur every two minutes to 10 minutes depending on the gas. And so you're gonna get daily outputs and that is what really is a game changer because the current methodologies that are out there which could be putting a cow's head in the box, where you don't capture the complete enteric emissions, or you're only using one gas, you only measuring one gas like methane, you're ignoring the other gases, or you're not looking at daily yields, and we're gonna be able to do all of that. And so we're looking at that complete picture. Again.
AS
Excellent, what what, what? What interventions are you looking at? What what's what's coming up in that space? Yeah, exactly.
JM
Um, so So yeah, I don't want to wait a year. Okay. So that's their thing. I’m sometimes an impatient person and I want to get started now because I know we actually have a talk I get phone calls and emails from farmers saying okay, what do I use like okay, what solutions are out there that not only inhibit methane but enhance you know, energy corrected milk production or have other benefits that's really a key priority that we need to think about. But so we did recently inquire and this happened just a couple of weeks ago, we acquired funding from New York state as well for two Greenfeed units. That order was placed there anticipated to be here September 1 or early September, and we're going to start with production trials. There are a number of ideas in the works. I will say that those early ideas we're going to focus in part on essential oils. So I'm not going to say a broadly different types of essential oils. I will say dietary fats sort of going back to some of the old older literature looking at dietary fat composition as a personal interest of mine. And so my colleagues also have ideas, but that's part of the initial focus, but I think long term, it's really going to be driven by team science. And that's where I'm trying to emphasize the organization, something that we hope to be prepared to announce in the future but we really want to have very specific research objectives and that we that the Cornell faculty develop as a group that sort of helps prioritize what projects, so of get priority. And that's very important, because we're getting quite a bit of attention and we know we're going to be busy. And so we're going to have some luxury to sort of pick and choose those projects based on our priorities.
AS
And you going through the in vitro process first to artificial rumen and to test things first. Are you gonna go jump straight into the chambers?
JM
Yeah, I'm a little bit I have very hard strong feelings about this. You know, when you look at some of the data and specific feed additives, you can get a completely different response in vivo than you see in vitro. I think there's a lot of validity to using an in vitro approach if you're really doing something that's completely discovery based where you want to screen 10 - 20 compounds. Some of the things I back in my mind I that's I think it'd be a good approach if you have no data at all, to know whether it's effective in suppressing methanogenesis. But of I think essential oils is a good one to talk about, because there's a lot of data to suggest and it's very effective like 50% or greater in terms methanogenesis inhibition in vitro. But when you look at it in vivo, you don't get that extendable reduction. And so we I think we to get solutions fast, for especially for compounds that have already been tested in vitro and have started to be tested in vivo. We got to start with in vivo. We got to start with the animal.
AS
No, that makes a lot of sense. Because at the end of the day, the the rumen is is a very, I guess complex and diverse space and it's not necessarily homogenous either. So what's happening in one corner of it isn't necessarily going to be the same as what's happening in another corner of it so that all that is only really going to be tested when you're doing it in the animal.
JM
There's also an issue with where, you know, there's a lot of studies that have come out of Europe that have tested feed additives, but the european diet is definitely different than North American diet. And we don't really have a firm grasp of I would say any additive at the moment in time in terms of how effective that additive is in different diets. And so one of the things that that I'm not necessarily leading but certainly some of my colleagues in the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability they're concerned about is the International sort of, how do we how do we get these solutions out internationally? We were just I was just looking at some data looking at efficiency of production across different countries and we're comparing the United States versus China. And India. And yeah, United States and North America and looks great on efficiency. And when you look at some of these other countries, they they've got a lot of improvement. And so the same sort of the same situation is going to happen with feed additives, whether it's a feed additive for cow or feed additive for goat or sheep, whatever or dietary approach it doesn't necessarily have to be feed additive. But how do we get how do we understand how that works in our system, but also systems sort of across the world and how do we make those connections? How do we engage, train and ensure the translation of that science across those different systems and it is very complicated. Otherwise, efficiency would have been solved in some of those other countries already. But it's not
AS
completely completely. So that's all part of your mandate as well is working with
JM
there is yeah, there's we're really trying to you know, there's a lot of people here that at Cornell and that, that that in that Atkinson Center for Sustainability, it's a group that gets a lot of donor funds to support research focused on sustainability, but we they want to solve the problem like there and they realize that it's not just okay what are we doing with the cow, but what do you do with the manure? How do you how do you how do you like I said, How do you have international impact and so trying to take a multi sort of faceted approach to the to the problem, but we do realize that what our strengths our strengths our dairy cattle nutrition, we have the CNC PS model that we have has led in improved efficiency across the world. But and we have the facilities to study the feed additives and drugs. Now that we have the sort of the gold standard chambers in the future we'll be we'll have all the tools necessary to do this right.
AS
And obviously, this is a predictive question. So we where do you think that the best results are going to come from is it going to be changes in management is it going to be changes in diet is it going to be some sort of a a feed additive is that in other conversations I've had recently, a lot of people have said it's, you know, it's not necessarily what bugs are actually in the rumen and but how they collaborate and communicate. So I guess it's understanding how you would tweak the bugs you want to be more active or inhibit the ones that you don't want? Where or is it going to be a combination of all those things to the final or the next steps are going to be?
JM
I’d put genetics in there? You know, I think genetics, firmly genetics drives enhanced efficiency and we feed cows to support that enhance efficiency and support the genetics of the cow to help make her make more milk or milk or meat. But the you know, I think in the short term, you know, there's 50 years of data that show that yes, there are additives to suppress methanogenesis. Like there's a solution there. What we need is better data, right? We need concrete sort of robust data that considers the other variables around the methane because there's probably solution in there somewhere that not only inhibits methane, but enhances performance with you know, without compromising efficiency, or nitrogen and phosphorus retention like we there are solutions there. We just haven't been able to have a broad enough scope and you know, like seaweeds, a great example of seaweed, seaweeds and some of those species right? 80 - 90% inhibition. Okay, that's really great. And I And I'm, I hope it works out. But there's a lot of things on the outskirts of seaweed that we need to think about in terms of how it's how it's being manufactured. How do you transport it, like what are the emissions coming from that, you know, and but also like the components and seaweed that could potentially be a human safety concern, which I think the science suggests is probably not, not the case. But it's something we can't ignore, because we need to learn from our history here. And whenever we had new biotechnology or new advancements in animal science that really propelled the industry forward, either one we really haven't educated the public well enough to really understand hey, we've actually been a leader in sustainability like we our enhancements in efficiency are are amazing, but the consumer really didn't understand that. So that was we didn't educate enough there. But when we did try to educate like on biotechnology by recombinant bovine somatotrophin it ended up failing us because our approach was, I can go back and try to be say how could we have done it differently as a scientific community to better educate consumers about the safety of rBST but that's, that's a technology that exists that could further enhance efficiency at this moment. And and reduce absolute methane emissions, but we're not using it because of sort of some misinformation that's out there.
AS
On on that note, because that's a huge part of it. There's one one side of it's having the science and having the technology to address the the issues and the problems. You've got the adoption of it by farmers, and I think that goes back to what you said. Whereas if you're essentially methane, methane is a it's an energy dense compound. And so whenever the methane goes into the atmosphere, that's that's energy that's lost from the animal that could otherwise be used for growth, maintenance, production, etc. And then the third side of it is the consumer willingness to, you know, I guess endorse the solutions that the industry puts together. What do you see how do you see that landscape and learning from the mistakes of the rBST? Where do you see or where would you like to see that moving forward?
JM
Well, one thing that I think we've already sort of been responsive to this and that is finding sort of plant based sort of compounds to sort of really leverage them because it will soon as you start using the word plant, no matter what level of education somebody has they're gonna be much more receptive to that technology. And you know, seaweeds a great example to I think seaweed is one where yeah, there is the presence of bromoform that are potentially a concern, but because you're talking about seaweed as all these amazing health properties that they talk about in humans, there's probably a lot a lot more acceptability to that solution. But, you know, I think I think it's gonna be really unique because the whole sustainability part wasn't part of the conversation when rBST really first came out like it not like it is today, right. And, and especially within within the framework of methane. So the consumers are going to be challenged with making a decision about sort of what they value more. And I have a feeling that that animal science right now is certainly I think, starting to get more recognition for the advances they did that they have made, and there's better clarity now more so than ever. So I'm optimistic that that clarity will only improve and the consumer will be more informed when they have to make that buying decision.
AS
Do you think we've gotten to the point where, where it's not about having the perfect option, but having the least imperfect option? So going back to the rBST we do we have a yes it would be wonderful if we can all have our food produced with zero environmental impact grown completely naturally, without any chemicals, etc, etc. But, you know, there's will be eight or 9 billion of us on the planet at some stage in the not too distant future. And maybe that's just a luxury that we we don't have. But that's very much a difficult proposal to sell to, to the consumer.
JM 19:19
Yeah, I mean, there's not going to be a perfect solution. Alright. I think we're naive to think that we're trying to fight for the magic molecule that it's going to solve everything I don't think that's going to happen. Methane is a great example of that, because in the rumen, there's different pathways, that converge on methanogenesis, you can make methane via alternative routes. And so whatever compound you're talking about, it's gonna likely hit one of those pathways over another and so we don't know if there's compensation of the alternative pathways, or maybe you can shut down one but you're not going to impact another and so this complete inhibition is probably a bit naive. And also that hydrogen has to go someplace and we need to think about how that's going to potentially impact things like fiber digestion and, and and milk production in response to that and so, yeah, it's gonna take some work, but the evidence is there like we know that there's effective, there are solutions out there to inhibit methane what we don't have is a good quantitative data or again in a holistic perspective
AS
on what what resolution are you looking at analyzing the the methane production from Are you taking rumen samples any looking at all the different VFAs etc will that be part of the research, you're going to look at the genomics of the rumen microbiome see what's happening all at the biochemical level?
JM
When we I would love to do it all. You know me I don't I? I learned from the best in the study time effort. I was trying to look as much things as possible, but I would say like, yeah, so if I had to come up with the core measurements, like okay, let's measure the all the gases Okay, and I will take the moment here to say, we're gonna look at enteric emissions, but let's also take the manure, okay, and let's put that in some buckets. in special chambers, many chambers will call, perhaps that to the gas analyzer and see what impact that dietary approach had on the manure emissions. We don't really we haven't really thought about that at all, I would argue as relative to what's being exhaled. And so that's going to be part of the equation and we wouldn't need to think about the total emissions from both of those sources. We think about nutrient digestibility and that's something that our group here does fairly well. And so looking at fiber digestibility fat digestibility start to disability, we want to make sure nothing's being compromised there. Like you said rumen fermentation, VFAs Absolutely. And that's something we do routinely. Milk composition it's holistically in terms of fat protein lactose, but, you know, one thing my lab does is milk fatty acid composition. So I have a personal interest in that, especially in regard to methane, because there's some new science suggesting that that composition of specific milk fatty acids could help predict methane output and this as you start to think about how do you measure methane on individual farms? Hey, maybe that's the solution. But the I would also think that there's sort of an animal health component too with anything. We just some of our routine measurements, we'll look at common things, B hydroxybutyrate, fatty acids, insulin things. Like that. But yeah, the microbiome is a tough one at Cornell, we don't, you wouldn't, you'd be surprised. at this moment in time, I would say do not have a rumen microbiologist that does microbiome work. We're fighting to make that different to hire somebody in the future. I think that is the plan. So we do I do collaborate personally a lot with different people in the microbiome world through other collaborators to just to get that work done, but it's certainly a key component. Absolutely.
AS
Because I guess, the bugs are the ones that whether it's in the manure or or whether it's in the in the rumen, they're the ones that are actually doing all the heavy lifting and producing all the metabolites including the undesirable ones the methane and nitrous oxides, etc etc. So back to other sides of sustainability other than the methane issue. Why, what are you looking at in that more broadly?
JM
Oh, you know, I'm not the right person to talk about this, but you know, one of my colleagues here, Dr. Kristan Reed. She is in charge of developing with a lot of collaborators across the across the country, a whole system's farm model to be able to look at emissions and nutrient use across the farm system and so there's a lot of efforts focused on that. That's called Rufus and the, you know, Mike van Amburgh, he's a protein guy and he is really focused on defining sort of nutrient requirements really focused on amino acid requirements for dairy cows as a way to enhance sort of nitrogen retention and reduce nitrogen excretion. So those are things we are probably more so thinking about in the short term, because it just makes sense to people that we have. What else? You know, there are there are people that are across campus looking at the international engagement component I started talking about. I don't really understand how we're going to achieve that because there's in the short term because we really need the I think the ways to either bring people here to get trained, then bring that back and then have them get incentivized for doing the training but also applying it and so like the CNC PS was brought up in a conversation we had a couple of days ago. That's obviously our nutrition model. And the thought process there was really don't have the right feed chemistry for feeds in these different countries. And so how that would probably be something we could do in the short term is how do we get the appropriate feed chemistry to put into that model? And so people and nutritionists in these other countries could really benefit from the model. And that's something that we thought, hey, that's probably something we could do in the short term. How do we solve that one? I'm obviously focused a lot on the nutrition part. I mean, there's a whole manure management component and that's sort of not where I don't have a strong familiarity in that I don't. we have nobody in our department. That's would say Quirine Kettering. Kettering. She does our sort of leads to nutrient use and management for New York State and there's there's a lot of directed to her. And then there's somebody else, Bob Howard. He's a professor here. He's interested in the isotopic composition of methane. And so he can be we hopefully use these chambers as a way to measure the isotopic composition. And when you do that, you can get a better understanding of the origin of methane. And so then one of these models try to say dairies responsible for this X percent, while we were able to refine that a bit more because we'd be able to know based on cows that are fed on primarily on a pasture versus conventional TMR, then the isotopic composition can be different, and so we can better identify what are the primary origins of methane emissions?
AS
Well, that's, um, that's super interesting. And in terms of outreach, getting the broader farming community involved or to uptake and implement findings, what's the approach there?
JM
Well, well, I mean, obviously, the United States is a well developed extension program of all land grant universities and we're think we're strategically positioned to to do that. Cornell as we're very privileged to have what's called Pro dairy, the dairy advancement program in partnership with New York state's Department of Agriculture and Markets. And this pro dairy is has a full staff people that are there interacting with dairy farmers on a daily and weekly basis, and there's people devoted to go into educating about manure management or there's going to be people devoted to educating about feed additives that inhibit methane. So they're trying to think about how do you monitor for methane emissions on individual farm like you're starting to have these conversations so we have the support at least locally here in New York State. I know similar programs like that exists and other dairy states. So, you know, that's that's to our advantage. But again, that's not solving the problems, you know, in Africa and India. And we need to figure that one out. Because that's where you're gonna get through global solutions. And we're not there.
AS
No, that makes a lot of sense. If you had the you know, this is a huge global problem and if someone rocked up at your at your door and with the with the blank checkbook and said Joe run for it, here you go, what would you do?
JM
Oh, I already have the budget for that. So I could tell you right now I need 10 million. No, all joking aside, what we have I think this is happens in every university. You got bright people that are really focused on one thing, right? They're focused on one really good area of interest me dairy cow biology. I could probably even go deeper and say I'm interested in fat nutrition, right? That's my little that’s my core interest. But what we don't really I think we can do better and I would say that there are examples of us have already working together. But you have to sort of change the organizational structure, not just within the university, but across universities, across states across countries to interact better and I would think that we need that level of organization would require that does require financial support. And that requires people devoted specifically to this problem. And one of the things I've tried to advocate for even in our own department, is to think about when we hire faculty members when we hire people, these people are hired to solve specific problems, and they can come up with their own innovative way to solve the problem, but we need to be problem based in order and in the short term to get to have fast solutions. That blank check would be helpful to hire, to be helpful to develop an organization here to do we need some analytical equipment to do that, to do a lot of that chemistry on our own I would love that. But that said, I think we need people we invest in people first and foremost, and to really, you know, drive solutions.
AS
So that some one of the reasons that I've started doing these podcasts because I'm very fortunate to get to speak to a lot of people like yourself and others and have these great conversations and so they they end up notes in my notepad so I thought if I could start putting them out there in the public domain so that at least people hear some of those ideas. Hopefully that will be beneficial.
JM
Let me just finish here and to say that we actually just received a grant to work as part of the funding came from internally. But this is in partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund, EDF and over the next 12 months to 18 months, we're gonna be working to communicate directly with the FDA and to basically develop what we call standardized sort of methodology to study feed additives and drugs and develop sort of core recommendations that we think would be hopefully well received by the FDA at some point. I know other lobbying groups are doing this as well. I've had conversations with others in addition to EDF. But the thought process here is if we can say hey, we don't need 50 Plus studies for to test you know, a free guide, never crowded, approved as effective and safe. But they are there's a smaller subset of studies and you need these core measurements and this is how it needs to be done. That's what we're going to be going through that process of the next 12 months, and it serves two purposes. One we hope to have a strong recommendation the FDA to help accelerate conditional approval for feed additives or drugs, but at the same time, it benefits us because it lets us before those chambers are installed really develop the real thought process behind what what will be that methodology what what is the core piece of data that are going to be required, so that when they do get install, we're off and running and we have a template and and we make progress.
AS
Excellent. That's cool. That's excellent. Um, is there anything else that you'd like to say that I haven't that we haven't already discussed?
JM
Oh, that was probably hit just right there. Ash. You know, I would say, you know, we tend to forget this and I it's close to heart too. And that's and that's, you know, student training and education, right. You know, one thing that I think we value here and then many other universities certainly value this as well, anything we do on the research and development side that we do in tandem with student education. And so, one of the things that we really were thinking about here is how do we better train students in sort of in animal nutrition and feed chemistry, using different analytical techniques. And so when they're ready, they're they laugh, they've actually knew how to do this, these techniques. They know how to interpret data using these various techniques. Realizing that we'll have a very unique way to study gas emissions and so putting students to that training exercise is going to be key. Something that I personally have taken on as I created a new course called communications in animal science, and it's a one credit course, basically, what I had the students do is they get to pick the topic and so one of the topics was on plant based milk alternatives, most recent topic they chose, and they had to go out to the grocery stores and talk to people and just getting students in agriculture to go talk to the consumer to say, hey, what, what what are your concerns like, why did you make that purchase? And so they did that. And then they had a chance, then go back and talk to scientists and sort of say, Hey, were they right or wrong? And then they helped develop sort of social media content to get that out there. And so we just got an NSF grant to really help support that because it does take a little bit of money to to make that initiative happen. And I'm getting some training to do the audio video editing that’s the hardest part of the whole thing to be honest with you. But that said, the students have seemed to enjoy it so far, and they're actually getting students that are not even in animal science. They're coming from down on campus like in history. And so that's that even adds to the tension to the conversation because they have their own perspectives and so it's about educating not just students, but educating the public simultaneously. I'll leave it on that note.
AS
Excellent, excellent. Um, thank you very much, Joe. It's been a pleasure. That's, that's great. So thank you very much.
JM
Thank you, Ash. This is enjoyable. Have a good weekend.