Improving animal feed products

Humans depend on livestock for meat, milk, wool, furs, skins, biofuels, and a host of other important products. Their importance in human society corresponds to the vast resources needed for their production, such as land for grazing, as well as the substantial environmental impact this entails. One approach to reducing the environmental degradation of livestock production may be by improving livestock feed. Improved feed qualities may, among others things, lower methane emissions from ruminants (currently responsible for 3% of total greenhouse gases) and lead to more efficient conversion of feed into meat and milk (permitting smaller herds, thus reducing deforestation for grazing land).

This strategy features in the framework of Agenda 21 as formulated at UNCED (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), now coordinated by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development and implemented through national and local authorities. Agenda 21 recommends improving productivity, nutritional quality and shelf-life of animal feed products, including work on pre- and post-harvest losses.

1. Supplying quality animal feeds
2. Improving feeding of domestic animals
3. Improving

1. Reducing overgrazing
2. Reducing methane emissions from animal husbandry
3. Raising profitable market livestock
4. Producing nutritious low cost meat
5. Preserving perishable food stuffs
6. Intensifying agriculture to reduce deforestation
7. Improving feeding of domestic animals
8. Improving animal husbandry
9. Farming animals
10. Ensuring farm animal productivity

1. Using animal feed additives
2. Testing animal health products
3. Developing agricultural biotechnology

1. Banning growth hormones in meat

1. Overgrazing
2. Misuse of agricultural resources for production of animal feed
3. Methane gas emissions from animal husbandry
4. Lack of meat and egg production
5. Insufficient pastureland
6. Health hazards from animal feedstuffs
7. Food insecurity
8. Excessive use of land for agriculture
9. Excessive use of hormones in animal husbandry
10. Cultivation of marginal agricultural land
11. Contaminated animal feed