  Young neutron stars cool via the emission of neutrinos from their core. A
precise understanding of all the different processes producing neutrinos in the
hot and degenerate matter is essential for assessing the cooling rate of such
stars. The main Standard Model processes contributing to this effect are $\nu$
bremsstrahlung, mURCA among others. In this paper, we investigate another
Standard Model process initiated by the Wess-Zumino-Witten term, leading to the
emission of neutrino pairs via $N\gamma\to N\nu\bar\nu$. We find that for
proto-neutron stars, such processes, with degenerate neutrons, can be
comparable and even dominate over the prototypical and well-known cooling
mechanisms.
