It was great to catch up with several GRSB members, as well as participate in two different sessions on common methods for measuring climate impact and reducing the impact of imported feed in ruminant production.
My thanks to those of you who shared national level approaches to antimicrobial stewardship in preparation for the meeting at FAO.
The emergence of antimicrobial resistance is a global threat to human health and livestock health, welfare and productivity. Refinement, reduction and replacement of antimicrobial use are key measures to curb the emergence of the resistance.
Four member organizations of GASL, Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, International Poultry Council, International Meat Secretariate and International Dairy Federation, discussed challenges, opportunities and actions taken on the commercial side of livestock production. The on-line audience was able to ask questions and add comments.
One of the points I was able to refer to was GRSB’s own Antimicrobial Stewardship Guidance, which many of you helped to develop. You can find our FAQs here. You can find a recording of the event in Rome here.
The Livestock Innovation Summit was a useful opportunity to meet many professionals in our field as well as from aquaculture. The first panel in which I participated was focused on the importance of using consistent methods to measure climate impact of livestock production.
This was a good opportunity to refer to the Carbon Footprint Guideline we released earlier this year (see also the Fact Sheet, & FAQs). As you will recall, our guideline aligns well with the Dairy industry approach.
One topic that came up was the difficulty of measuring and accounting for carbon sequestration. Happily, the C-Sequ project that has been coordinated by the Dairy Sustainability Framework, in which we were involved, has been released and has been adopted by IDF.
The second piece I was asked to be involved with at the Livestock Innovation Summit concerned the footprint of feed. I was asked specifically to talk about the use of Soya in cattle feed, and the deforestation in Latin America that may be related to that.
Since this was a meeting in the UK, with participants mostly from there, I was asked to focus on that country. It turns out, in fact, that little soy ends up in beef cattle feed in the UK, though more does enter dairy cattle rations.
More interesting is the fact that even in dairy rations it is questionable whether this is the best use of soy. It appears that in some instances where cows are yielding less than 30kg per day, soy may actually be used to meet energy rather than protein requirements.
Similarly, beef cattle would generally not require such high quality protein in feed unless it were very cheaply and easily available, since they would be competing with monogastrics for this protein and would also likely be using it for energy as well as protein. It turned out to be quite difficult to work out whether soy being fed to cattle in the UK is or is not contributing to deforestation in Latin America.
The two analyses contrast in where the soyameal comes from. One assumes it is Brazil, whereas the other assumes little ends up in cattle feed and likely comes from Argentina.
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You may recall in our walkabout webinar (password grsbeef2022) with producers back in January, we heard from Silas Hedley-Lawrence of FAI farms in England. They have transitioned from a housed, concentrate feed finishing system to an outwintered, grass finished system.
Not only have they been able to increase stock numbers using an AMP grazing system, but they have also reduced the time to finish steers by an impressive 6 months.
This begs the question of how much concentrate feeding is necessary in environments where grass production is plentiful. The superpower of ruminants converting cellulose that is indigestible to humans into high value protein for us to eat should be exploited to the extent possible before we add feeds that have a higher environmental footprint than grass.
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You may have come across recent articles by George Monbiot to promote his recent book. I found this article in response, which is a useful summary.
It has to be recognised that Monbiot is fully motivated by ideology, and despite his claims to the contrary, is very selective in his reading and interpretation of what he reads. In general, engaging with him and other animal rights activists is not rewarding, but can be relevant if the audience includes others who may be interested in hearing differing viewpoints.
