World Animal Protection welcomes the attention given by the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) to the importance of addressing the role of livestock in the development of sustainable agriculture. With this submission, we would like to:
-Focus on importance of Animal Health and Welfare to Sustainable Agriculture
-Make some general remarks as to the approach to achieving Sustainable Agriculture
-Raise some specific points
Animal Health and Welfare – Core to Sustainable Agriculture
The report highlights the importance of animal health and welfare as a component across all livestock farming types. This is welcomed, as is the report’s attention to the potential for good practice in animal handling, transport and slaughter to improve welfare, prevent disease and reduce carcass losses.
However, there’s still significant scope for improvement here. Animal welfare is not an ‘other’ consideration, but core to the social, economic, environmental and ethical dimensions of sustainability and should be reflected as such within the conceptual model noted on page 22.
In places, the report appears to imply that the issue of animal welfare is still controversial (p.58, line 47-51). Yet globally there is broad international consensus on animal welfare principles. The CFS Principles for Responsible Investments in Agriculture and Food Systems, as adopted in 2014, acknowledge that there is a positive correlation between supporting animal health and welfare on the one side and sustainably increasing productivity, food quality and food safety on the other. Moreover, all members of the World Organisation for Animal Health, currently 180 countries, have agreed to animal welfare principles and begun to develop global standards. Furthermore, respect and care for animals is a common thread throughout the world’s religions, including Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism and indigenous religions.
As yet the report does not give sufficient attention to the substantial benefits that good animal health and welfare provides for small scale producers, for example through feed quality, health management and husbandry skills. Existing naturalised systems of production often use local breeds well suited to their climate and thus are more robust in the face of environmental challenges. Provision for natural animal behaviour can reduce stress and boost productivity. Making use of the natural animal behaviours (like grazing and foraging) reduces the needs for inputs (feed, tractors, fuel).
In more intensive industrial agriculture systems, animal welfare is often compromised when farm design emphasises only productivity, and as such cannot be considered sustainable. It is possible to redesign these types of livestock production to account for animal welfare (such as indoor group housing rather than close confinement of animals in cages and crates) without negatively impacting productivity significantly. Efforts to improve productivity should always take into account animal welfare (for example breeding broiler meat chickens for better leg health to prevent culling due to lameness). Useful models such as McInerney (2004) conceptually describe the different pathways for improving livestock productivity while maintaining good animal welfare. It is important to note the evidence described in the report (Erb et al., 2009) that shows that farming systems which deliver good welfare can also provide sufficient food for the world’s future needs. Consequently, we propose that the section on animal welfare is extended to include this wider view.
It is noted throughout the report that both the terms animal welfare and animal care are used. It is not clear if these are used interchangeably and no definition of animal care is given. Please clarify if the definition of animal welfare on p58 applies to both.
Recommendation: The report should prioritise attention to animal welfare in all farming systems to increase their sustainability, recognising the positive correlation that exists between animal welfare and food quality, food safety and sustainably increasing productivity, and therefore, by extension, with achieving FSN.
General remarks
Sustainability and Policy Coherence
In ‘Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’ the global community committed to achieving sustainable development in its three dimensions — economic, social and environmental — in a balanced and integrated manner. A new approach is needed that recognizes cross-cutting elements that exist across the new Goals and targets and focuses on addressing these together. The current zero draft acknowledges the so-called ‘externalities’ of agriculture, particularly industrial livestock production, but does not yet sufficiently show how implementation of other Sustainable Development Goal areas will impact on agriculture.
Policy Coherence for Sustainable Development is now recognized globally as the means through which sustainable development can be achieved. This means that the externalities generated by agriculture must be reflected in all policy-processes (as noted in section 4.5) but also that policies and actions in other sectors are likely to limit the policy space available in the agricultural sphere. At present, the zero draft does not include an analysis of how global action to stop biodiversity loss, realizing affordable healthcare for all, limit global temperature increase to below 2 degrees, and ensure food and water security for all, to name a few, are going to be achieved concomitantly.
Recommendation: Recognizing the reciprocal consequences of policies and actions in agricultural and other related sectors, the report should recommend that Policy Coherence for Sustainable Development be a guiding principle for pathways towards sustainable agricultural development
Reversing the Challenge
While the zero draft accepts that globalization of the ‘Western diet’ is not sustainable, it does not challenge the central premise that rising demand, in part caused by higher incomes leading to a ‘Westernization’ of diets, must be met by equally rising supply.
An alternative approach (as hinted at on page 9, line 26-29) would be to use the boundaries of integrated economic, social and environmental sustainability, including achieving Food Security and Nutrition, as a basis for developing pathways to sustainable production and subsequently use sustainable supply levels to determine what action needs to be taken to influence demand. Even though this alternative approach may need more political leadership, the zero draft would be much improved if such an alternative approach were presented .
Recommendation: To achieve a sustainable global food system, the sustainability of supply levels must be considered in determining sustainable agricultural policy at the national, regional and global levels.
The Limits of Generalization
The zero draft reads as a discursive report, and reveals some of the major issues surrounding the role of livestock. More in depth analysis of the drivers of current trends (beyond population growth, GDP, urbanisation and changing diets) and greater clarity of narrative and structure could provide a clearer route to draw conclusions and highlight policies and practice change which can be enacted at international, regional and national level to achieve sustainable food systems.
Specifically, the report presents ‘projections’ as something conceptually different from a ‘scenario’ or even a ‘normative scenario’ (p.24-25). Yet a projection is based on historical trends which are the result of decisions and interactions of societal/political actors in the past. As such a projection is not neutral, but represents also a normative scenario. An analysis of the presence or absence of policy decisions which have worked for and against achieving sustainable food systems would be valuable to aid innovative thinking and find new direction beyond ‘business as usual’. Whilst the report leans heavily on the FAO baseline projection regarding demand of animal sourced foods (ASF) in 2050, it is also acknowledged that to achieve sustainability ‘business as usual’ is not an option. Greater clarity as to the criteria used for determining the relative value of different ‘scenario’s for developing pathways to sustainable agriculture is needed.
The report also generalizes about benefits and harms of ‘the livestock sector’. Yet these are very differently distributed over the various forms of livestock keeping, which makes any generalized statement about ‘the livestock sector’ as a homogeneous entity misleading. In reality, forms of livestock keeping range from greatly contributing to FSN to being very detrimental to FSN. Clarity and focus on those systems which contribute to FSN is necessary for building good policies, generalized statements that mask these differences are better to be avoided.
Throughout the report, there is an abundance of references to scenarios that note that the ‘potential’ exists to overcome certain challenges. In some cases such potential relies on technology that is not yet available today but there is an expectation that the required technological advancement will appear in time. Balancing the expectation of technological advancement with making different choices in terms of how we consume and produce is currently insufficiently highlighted in the report and would likely lead to more sustainable solutions.
Recommendation: Next iterations of the report should provide greater clarity as to the narrative and structure of the report and where possible include a judgement as to the relative value of projections used where necessary.
Synergies Rather than Trade-offs
Dealing with the different types of livestock systems, the report would benefit from increased emphasis on the potential of non-industrial and agro-ecological production, most relevant to small scale producers – without losing emphasis on the need for highly industrialised systems to (further) transform and become more sustainable. In this regard, the report’s underlining of the wider dimensions of economic, social, environment and ethics as core components of sustainability is welcomed. However, these core aspects of sustainability are often loosely described and too readily framed as subject to trade-offs.
The report has the potential to drive forward positive concrete impact on sustainable development of FSN by prioritising synergies rather than trade-offs. The priority for improving efficiency sustainably lies in enabling smallholder farmers as they have been evidenced as likely to provide the most effective route to achieving productivity through existing technologies (Gerber et al., 2013). Further intensifying production of already highly intensive systems such as yield-maximised dairy production offer relatively small increments in efficiency (outlined in de Jong, 2013), yet are likely to be less sustainable in a range of other aspects, for example through increased reliance on grain-based feed rather than in situ pasture, plus the potential for loss of livelihoods and biodiversity and higher animal health and welfare risks such as reduced fertility and increased susceptibility to disease. Such systems can be brought into better balance with inclusion of the social and environmental dimensions, including by substantially improving animal welfare.
One example of achieving synergies is the growth of silvo-pastoral systems in Latin America, which has demonstrated scientifically evidenced benefits for productivity, soil quality, greenhouse gas mitigation and animal welfare, while boosting rural economies and livelihoods (see http://www.agribenchmark.org/fileadmin/Dateiablage/B-Beef-and-Sheep/Misc/Other-Articles-Papers/CO-milk-beef-production-150203.pdf).
The report would benefit from a more in depth discussion of the use of human edible food to feed livestock in industrial systems. A major factor in the failure to achieve food and nutrition security to date has been the lack of coordination and balance between animal and plant food production on a local, national and international scale. Moreover, given the significant caloric and nutritional loss associated with the use of human-edible food as livestock feed, this practice and the amounts of food involved should really be included in the wider debate on food loss and waste.
Recommendation: Where possible, focus should be given to prioritizing systems with greater potential for synergies over systems that are more prone to trade-offs. Where trade-offs are unavoidable, trade-offs at the expense of animal welfare, and therefore sustainability, must be avoided.
The Role of Animals – Enabling Resilient Rural Societies
For many rural populations, animals are often people’s most valuable productive asset and disaster-related losses can have devastating impacts on rural livelihoods. In order for livestock production to be sustainable, it must be resilient. Preparedness for management of livestock welfare in regions faced with environmental challenges such as drought, climate change impacts or natural disasters can ensure resilience of farming systems and prevent damaging losses. This aspect of sustainable livestock production is as yet unexplored by the report. Given the expected higher incidence of natural disasters due to climate change, this becomes increasingly pressing.
The loss of animals during a disaster can create a second crisis in the form of long-term hunger, malnutrition and unemployment thereby increasing debt, recovery time and aid dependency. Livestock act as an important risk buffer during times of food scarcity and variability. Despite their critical importance, animals are often neglected during disasters due to a lack of knowledge, recognition, resources and co-ordination. The UNISDR reports that while human mortality is decreasing during disasters, the value of lost assets is increasing exponentially”. According a recent study by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), smallholder farmers and pastoralists absorb 22% of the economic costs of natural disasters yet receive less than 5% of post-disaster aid. Livestock mortality accounts for 36% of those costs, costing the sector $11 billion (USD) annually.
Helping smallholder farmers and pastoralists protect their livestock during disasters is a worthwhile investment for donor countries and should be one of the policy recommendation in this report given its importance to food, nutrition and economic security, sustainability and resilience. Studies show that investing in animal protection saves lives, livelihoods and foreign aid. This would also help countries fulfil their obligations to the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction which recommends “strengthening the protection of livelihoods and productive assets, including livestock, working animals, tools and seeds.” (see “Economic case for livestock interventions” for references).
Animals are more than a means of production, and the report needs to address this. Outside industrial systems, animals in agricultural systems often fulfil a range of functions, providing draught power to plough fields, transport, fertilizer, a social safety net, social status, companionship and cultural identity. The zero draft notes the multiple services provided by livestock beyond food and needs to reflect the wider role of animals as productive and cultural assets, so that livestock system specialization does not exclude these services and functions from the production process.
Recommendation: The report should recognize that livestock animals are sentient productive assets with multiple functions rather than commodities and concomitantly that the protection of and care for them will enhance their productive value and functional relevance sustainably.
Specific points:
-Figure 1. Important influences on consumption are missing, like marketing and education. For example, the Yale Rudd Food Center for Food Policy and Obesity found that only in the US, fast food companies spend 4.6 billion dollars annually on marketing of which more than one billion is directed at children aged 6-11. These companies would not spend these staggering amounts of money if this did not have profound impacts on food choice. http://www.fastfoodmarketing.org/media/fastfoodfacts_marketingrankings.pdf This issue is (very briefly) mentioned on page 41, but not followed up in the analysis and recommendations.
-‘Agricultural production itself depends on healthy agro-systems’ p.21, line 22/23. What is meant by this? At other points the report recognizes that a lot of agricultural production is actually the result of systems that are not healthy.
-‘animals are an essential part of these cycles’ p.21, line 27. Insert ‘often’ after ‘are’. Explanation: (many) agricultural systems exist without livestock component (based on synthetic, plant based and/or inorganic fertilizers and crop rotation), other agricultural systems do have a livestock component, but one which is not necessarily essential. Moreover, it is not really clear what is meant by ‘these cycles’.
‘there is a wide variation on acceptable ways to treat farm animals’ p.58, line 50. Delete the word ‘acceptable’ as this is in direct contradiction with the sentence before and the rest of the sentence. If there would indeed be a wide variation on acceptable ways, then it would be easy to reach consensus and no controversy would exist. Moreover, it is unclear who thinks that these widely varied ways are acceptable and why.
Dirk Verdonk