This article by the Sustainable Food Trust summarises and reviews the latest report by The Review on Antimicrobial Resistance. The author highlights the calls by the Review’s chair, Jim O’Neill, for a decreased use of antibiotics - especially those of most use in human medicine - worldwide, and presents the evidence laid out in the report and elsewhere for the link between veterinary use of antibiotics in livestock and increased antimicrobial resistance in human pathogens.

This report by Compassion in World Farming highlights the so-called “negative externalities” associated with livestock-based food production – that is, costs to human health and the environment that are borne by society as a whole and which are not accounted for by the cost of producing the food or the price of consuming it.

Abstract Livestock production worldwide is increasing rapidly, in part due to economic growth and demand for meat in industrializing countries. Yet there are many concerns about the sustainability of increased meat production and consumption, from perspectives including human health, animal welfare, climate change and environmental pollution.

This paper provides a useful overview of the effects that measures to reduce GHGs from the livestock sector can have upon the welfare of farmed animals.  It argues that most approaches geared at seek to increasing the intensity of production via changes in breeding, feeding and housing may increase productivity per unit of GHG s emitted but they come at the expense of animal health and wellbeing.

This new FCRN think piece focuses on the future of livestock production - or rather on a range of different livestock futures.

This review paper published in the Journal of Integrative Agriculture discusses the future of artificial meat.  It suggests that the meat industry will not be able to respond to increases in demand while also finding solutions to livestock induced welfare, health and sustainability challenges, and they will face competition from emerging non­-traditional meat and protein products, ranging from plant based meat replacements and in the longer term artificial meat.

Compassion in World farming has released the fifth and last part in a series of blogs by Peter Stevenson, Compassion in World Farming’s Chief Policy Advisor.  An extract from his post is included below:

This paper estimates that global use of antimicrobial drugs in animal farming is anticipated to rise by 67% by 2030, due to increasing demand for animal products and a shift towards more large scale intensive systems of production. It argues that a range of measures need to be taken in order to address the negative impacts of this growth.

In a new briefing – “How TTIP undermines food safety and animal welfare”, Friends of the Earth Europe, Compassion in World Farming, IATP, Grain and the Center for Food Safety, says that TTIP (the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) is likely to restrict efforts to build healthier, fairer and more sustainable food systems on both sides of the Atlantic.