Animal health focus Well-managed and healthy livestock
Well-managed and healthy livestock play a key role in the European Green Deal, Roxane Feller, Secretary General of AnimalhealthEurope argues.
The European Green Deal sets out how to make Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050, and the Farm to Fork Strategy is billed as being at the heart of this deal. It aims to comprehensively address the challenges of sustainable food systems and recognise the inextricable links between healthy people, healthy societies and a healthy planet.
The animal health industry has long been a supporter of more One Health thinking — i.e. realising that what impacts animal health will also impact both human and environmental health — and encourages policies that take this concept into account. So a transition towards a fair, healthy and environmentally friendly food system, based on innovative and enabling technologies is an ambition that the sector can support on the whole.
Digital applications
If the transition is to be just, it is clear that all means that support sustainable practices should be both included and incentivised in the strategy and its subsequent measures. And the progress made so far in Europe deserves recognition. Use of digital applications such as monitoring devices, data-driven decision-making, and diagnostics are coming to the fore in animal healthcare and husbandry. Coupled with improved prevention and biosecurity means, such advances are contributory elements that can further accelerate this transition.
Adoption of practices focusing on the health of the animal as well as public and environmental health have meant that over the past decade a majority of EU countries have reduced their use of antibiotics in animals by an average of 32% over the past 10 years.
And according to FAO, methane emissions from livestock in Europe have dropped by around 50% since the 1990s.
Food supply Europe cannot take its health, food supply, nor financial stability for granted. Recent events have brought this to mind once again. So a just transition must support a robust and resilient food system that continues to function in all circumstances. From a healthy animals perspective, just as animal disease can occur in.
From:https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/healthy-livestock/92596/