Researcher at the University of Nottingham have developed a free Excel-based tool to reduce the use of antibiotics on dairy farms. It is hoped this will help combat antimicrobial resistance in the farming industry. The calculator gives measurements which graphically display to farmers their use of antibiotics and detects any patterns. The calculator also tells farmers how their antibiotic use compares to other farms.

This article in Food Navigator discusses a start-up company which produces dairy proteins, from sugar and genetically modified yeast. The resulting proteins can be used in a wide range of products to replace animal-produced dairy protein, such as in chocolate, ice cream, protein shakes and yoghurt.

This report by Dutch bank ING considers the potential for a protein shift away from animal to plant protein. It finds that a quarter of EU consumers expects to eat less meat in five years’ time, mainly because of the concerns about the associated negative health effects. In addition, it poses that a further shift in consumer preferences is likely as the level of innovation in alternative protein is high and governments are increasingly concerned about the carbon footprint of diets.

The top five mega-corporations responsible for factory-farmed meat and dairy are responsible for emitting more combined greenhouse gases (GHGs) than Exxon, or Shell, or BP. That is according to findings released in a joint study undertaken by IATP and GRAIN.

This is a revised edition of a book on meat production edited by Joyce D'Silva and John Webster. Since its first edition in 2010, all chapters have been updated and six new chapters have been added .

Eating Better, an alliance of British organisations working together to help people move towards eating less meat and dairy, has published a policy report entitled ‘Beyond the CAP: policies to support better UK meat and dairy production post-Brexit’.

This research measures dairy cows’ motivation to access the outdoors. The results show cows are highly motivated for outdoor access. The majority of the cows in this experiment pushed through a weighted gate at least as hard to access pasture as they did to access fresh feed.

In this paper, using three scenarios for food demand, the researchers model and highlight the indirect relationship between greenhouse gas (GHG) emission abatement within the food supply system and the energy system, globally.

The authors of this paper compare the impact of intensification in the beef and dairy sectors via two pathways; either intensification within a system (e.g. a mixed crop-livestock system) or through transitioning to another more productive system (from pasture to mixed crop-livestock production) and assesses the mitigation potential that could arise.   It reviews the impacts of these forms of intensification on both GHG emissions, land occupation and land use change (LUC), the last of which has often been excluded in other similar analyses.