Group calls for collective action on livestock sustainability

Speaking at the World Meat Congress in Beijing, Neil Fraser, chair of the Global Agenda for Sustainable Livestock, said the sector needed to get on board with his organisation to tackle the challenges the sector faces when it comes to sustainable production.

He said around 26% of all land is used for livestock production, a vast amount of which is degraded, and the sector uses around 15% of the total amount of water used in agricultural production.

In the meantime, however, the livestock sector employs 1.3bn people around the world, provides a livelihood for around 800 million poor people, a lot of which are women and accounts for 26% of global protein consumption.

With the diversity of production systems from around the world, ranging from buffalo production in India to feed-lot based intensive systems in the US, there was “no single answer”​ to the problem. “There’s also no single organisation that can address and solve these challenges, and no stakeholder group that has the answer – there’s a need for collective, global action, and that’s where the Global Agenda for Sustainable Livestock comes in.”​

He said his organisation was working towards establishing harmonised models for the assessment of environmental performances within the supply chain, the Global Livestock Environment Assessment Model (GLEAM).

By using the GLEAM system, it offered the industry the opportunity to look for ways to improve, which would in turn increase productivity and also help to boost profits, he added, and there was considerable capacity for innovation within the sector.