Animal Health and Welfare, Human Well-being, Food Security and Sustainability 57
Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and eco-
nomic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food which meets their dietary
needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. Household food security
is the application of this concept to the family level, with individuals within
households as the focus of concern.
(FAO, 2003)
This experience has convinced FCN and others that:
- government and its agencies could and should work even more closely with ex-
isting farm support networks and commercial and professional organizations, to
facilitate early intervention in relation to problems of the poor well-being of farm
personnel that are having an impact on animal welfare, and vice versa;
- support networks should be empowered to work more closely together, sharing
information and best practice, and making joint decisions on which agency
will take responsibility for each case;
- there should be wider publicity of support networks at different levels, in-
cluding GP surgeries and veterinary practices and, most importantly, through
communications managed by government agencies;
- government agency staff who interact with farmers should be trained on recog-
nizing both animal and human welfare issues and given guidance on how to
respond appropriately.
Case Study 15. Continued.
Animal welfare is an intrinsic part of sustainable agriculture, and supports
food security. However, animal welfare and productivity improvements may
actually be counterproductive to sustainability unless they are combined with
(i) reduced human consumption of animal products; and (ii) radical changes to
animal production that reduce the use for livestock feed components that com-
pete with direct human food (Schader et al., 2015). These include, for example,
cereals that can be used more efficiently by humans. In summary, there is a need
for both the supply and demand sides – including production and waste – to
change if a sustainable food system is to be achieved (Röös et al., 2017).
In ruminant production, good examples of sustainable production sys-
tems that can be developed further are those focusing on feed from grass-
land, such as silvopastoral systems. These include shrubs and trees as well as
the more conventional grass pasture. When compared with other ruminant
production systems, they can provide efficient feed conversion, increased
3.3 Animal Health and Welfare, Environmental Protection,
Food Security and Sustainability
This sub-section follows on from sub-section 3.2 to cover the beneficial as-
pects of livestock welfare improvements to wider areas of societal concern
such as climate change, sustainability and food security.
