Meat consumption is increasing, especially in the emerging economies. The Chinese government has an increasing interest in making steps towards sustainable livestock production, and the more GHG (greenhouse gas) “efficient” pork and poultry industries have seen substantial progress towards sustainability in the recent past.

This very interesting paper essentially argues that policies designed to incentivise production efficiencies achieve greater GHG reductions than those focusing on consumption. Moreover they do so at lower calorie ‘cost’ than consumption side measures. The abstract is given below, but we’ve produced some further explanation of the paper’s approach and findings, together with some comments in Our summary and commentary (which you can also download as a PDF below) draws upon some very helpful insights from Professor Pete Smith at the University of Aberdeen and includes some useful commentary from Dr Marco Springmann at the University of Oxford – thanks to both.

The European Commission was due to publish a Communication on Sustainable Food in 2013 to “assess how best to limit waste throughout the food supply chain, and consider ways to lower the environmental impact of food production and consumption patterns”.  This long-awaited Communication has still not been published.

This fact sheet from Green Facts deals with antibiotic resistance, drawing upon and summarising several leading scientific reports.  It discusses questions such as ‘What has caused this resistance and how can the spread of it be limited?’ There is a short section on antibiotics use in the livestock sector. Read the full fact sheet online here. Find more resources on antibiotic resistance on our website.

This short article runs through consumption data on meat and dairy products in China in urban and rural areas in 1990, 2002 and 2012. It uses data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China and the National Nutrition Survey.

This event, hosted by Zoetis, the largest animal health provider in the world and entitled ‘Mega trends in livestock production: The state of animal agriculture 2025–2050′ focused on livestock production in a global perspective.

This campaign has been launched to re-introduce the feeding of waste to pigs. It hopes to encourage farmers about the benefits of feeding pigs surplus food and calls for a change in European law so farmers can return to feeding pigs waste in the long term.

This video from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), features ILRI director general Jimmy Smith talking on the role of livestock in the global development agenda. The 13 minute film points out that 4 of the top 5 agricultural commodities by value are livestock, and that in Africa, 4 of the top 10 agricultural commodities are livestock which indicates the importance of livestock for the global food and poverty agenda.  The presentation also considers the challenges posed by rising demand for meat.

This open access article from Chalmers University, Sweden, argues that unless we reduce our consumption of meat and dairy, world temperatures will continue to rise and we will be unable to meet the goal of keeping global temperatures from rising more than 2˚C.