Pork | TableDebates

Book: Pig tales: An omnivore's quest for sustainable meat

Author Barry Estabrook explores the American pork industry in search of more responsible production systems.

New WWF report highlights the impacts of our appetite for animal protein on the environment

The new report by World Wildlife Fund, Appetite for Destruction, highlights the vast amount of land that is needed to grow the crops used for animal feed, including in some of the planet’s most vulnerable areas such as the Amazon, Congo Basin and the Himalayas.

Photo: naturalbornstupid, meat, Flickr, Creative Commons License 2.0 generic.

Global meat news survey report on industry trends and impacts

A Global Meat News survey of top industry professionals analysing trading trends and impacts on the meat industry globally shows that most respondents (24%) stated that the pressure to limit meat consumption was the factor that hit the industry as a whole the hardest in 2016.

Photo: Erik Edgren, taro burger, Flickr, Creative Commons License 2.0 generic.

How Do Dietary Choices Influence the Energy-System Cost of Stabilizing the Climate?

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.

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Focus: the difficult livestock issue

A central topic of most debates on sustainable food systems is the complex role of livestock, meat and dairy. This is due to their connection to many issues of moral and practical concern related to food systems; affecting both humans and the environment, and animal's own interests. The picture is complex. And because different stakeholders bring different worldviews and perspectives, people often disagree about the appropriate role of livestock, meat, and dairy, in sustainable food systems. Yet demand for meat and dairy consumption is expected to grow considerably, and as a result, debates around livestock-related issues are becoming increasingly prominent. Understanding these helps to provide a broader understanding of food systems more generally.

Photo: USDA, pigs, Flickr, creative commons licence 2.0

Antibiotic resistance is also a food and climate issue

In this blog David McCoy, director of Medact, argues that UK farmers and government should work hard to reduce on-farm antibiotic use. With evidence building that antimicrobial resistance in farm animals can be transferred across to humans, the issue is becoming increasingly urgent.

Photo credit: (Bernard Spragg, NZ. Under creative commons licence, Flickr)

How can the EU climate targets be met? A combined analysis of technological and demand-side changes in food and agriculture

This paper finds that the EU’s climate targets for 2050 for methane and nitrous oxide can be met by a combination of technological improvements in agriculture (found to have a potential to cut emissions by nearly 50% in optimistic scenarios) and through a reduction in beef consumption. The study authors argue that these targets can be met even with a continued high consumption of pork and poultry.

Apocalypse pig –how the last antibiotics are starting to fail

A new form of antibiotic resistance was recently identified and the results of the ongoing research project have been published in The Lancet Infectious Disease. The Lancet published the paper as part of their series on antimicrobial access and resistance to coincide with the WHO’s World Antibiotic Awareness Week for Nov 16–22, 2015.

Reducing the land use of EU pork production: where there's swill, there's a way

This paper discusses the use of food waste as a feed source for pigs reared for pork in the EU, the current policy landscape and implications for agricultural land use, profits and pork production of using waste as feed. The authors find that re-legalising the use of food waste as pig feed in the EU could spare 1.8 million hectares of global agricultural land, improve profitability for many farmers, and produce pork of high quality.