Since the first commercial sale of Posilac on Feb. 4, 1994, it has helped deliver substantial economic and environmental benefits, in addition to helping today’s dairy producers meet a growing demand for milk.

To date, more than 37 million U.S. dairy cows have been supplemented with Posilac over its 20 years in the marketplace, reducing producers’ costs by about $6.3 billion over the two decades or $.50 to $1.50 on every hundredweight.1 Further, Posilac enables cows to produce about 10 lbs. more milk per day.2

In fact, six U.S. dairy cows supplemented with Posilac produce the same amount of milk as seven cows without it.3 Beyond the economic benefits, it also offers significant environmental resource savings. On average annually over the past 20 years Posilac use has resulted in4:

• 3.2 million tons less feed required annually, enough to fill about 133,300 semi-trucks. (63.4 million tons cumulatively)
• 1,023 square miles less land use required each year, equal to half a million football fields which would be enough to circle the Earth’s equator when laid end to end. (20,464 square miles total)
• An average of 95.6 billion gallons less water used annually, or the annual household consumption of the entire state of New Mexico. (1.9 trillion gallons total)
• 4.6 million tons less manure produced, equivalent to the weight of 99 Titanics. (92 billion tons total)
• 2.9 million metric tonnes less CO2 equivalent produced, equal to removing 617,126 cars from the road. (58.5 million tonnes total)

“Posilac plays an important role in reducing the environmental footprint of dairy production,” says Dennis Schaffler, senior director of Elanco’s dairy business unit. “This is critically important given the World Wildlife Fund reports the world is already overusing its resources, requiring 1.5 years to regenerate annual resource consumption.”

Products like Posilac will be even more important in the future. While global dairy productivity has doubled in the past 50 years, there’s 14 percent less milk available per person today than in 1961.5 U.S. dairy producers reduced the deficit by adding an average of 8.85 billion 8-oz glasses of milk4 to our global supply annually due to Posilac use.