October 2024
Improve animal health to reduce livestock emissions: Quantifying an open goal
Improve animal health to reduce livestock emissions: Quantifying an open goal
Former Dyrlæger & Ko colleague (now lecturer at Aarhus University) Mogens Krogh, has been involved in the following project, along with representatives from a number of academic institutes across Europe, Africa, USA and Canada.
Mogens is also a part of the Grønt Udviklings og demonstrationsprogram (Greener Development and Demonstration Program (GUDP)), a large-scale project combining the efforts of research institutions and privately owned businesses, including Dyrlæger & Ko. The KlimaKS dashboard will contribute new tools to help farmers in their efforts to prevent health problems in dairy cows. A surveillance tool - SURVEIL - is being developed to find causes of and preventive measures to diseases. By using herd data combined with veterinarian’s observations and milk samples, the tool will alert of health problems which then can be confirmed with blood samples. The project is being run by Aarhus and Copenhagen University, Dyrlæger & Ko, SimHerd and ARLA.
Here we provide a summary of the key research findings.
Read more at: Kyriazakis I et al. 2024 Improve animal health to reduce livestock emissions: quantifying an open goal. Proc. R. Soc. B 291: 20240675.
Cows grazing on a hill side
Key Messages
Poor animal health increases emissions intensity.
Interventions to improve animal health can therefore contribute substantially to emissions reduction targets.
This opportunity is being missed due to poor alignment with emissions accounting systems and a lack of critical data.
We propose a framework and data sources to close this gap and apply animal health interventions to climate change mitigation.
Impacts of animal health on individual animal-level emissions can be accounted for using the intermediate IPCC method (tier 2), when health affects observable productivity estimates.
The more complex IPCC method (tier 3) enables the accurate estimation of animal health mitigations, as it can account for detailed changes in animal management & physiological benefits of interventions.
The Challenge
Globally livestock production accounts for around 11-14.5% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and also contributes to other forms of pollution and biodiversity loss. Yet simply reducing numbers would negatively affect food security, rural livelihoods and options for climate change adaptation. Other, technical solutions to reduce emissions have potential but are costly and will take time to deliver.
The Opportunity
Improve animal health to reduce emissions and climate change
Interventions can be applied now using existing technologies for win-win outcomes
Recommendations
A roadmap for research is provided to address gaps in the data needed to properly quantify impacts of animal health - & animal health interventions - on emissions and drive concerted action.
Interventions can be:
Implement health measures immediately to attain benefits without delay.
Establish common, consistent & open data repositories for key variables.
Conduct routine health estimates and national scale to capture trends and impacts
Incorporate livestock health into national emissions reductions plans.
Validate estimates with experimental data, using new data to increase accuracy.
Engage stakeholders on action and uncertainties to enhance transparency.
References
[1] Kyriazakis I et al, 2024. 'Improve animal health to reduce livestock emissions: quantifying an open goal'. Proc. R. Soc. B 291: 20240675. (https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2024.0675)
[1] Kyriazakis I et al, 2024. 'Improve animal health to reduce livestock emissions: quantifying an open goal'. Proc. R. Soc. B 291: 20240675. (https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2024.0675)