Who is jl capper

Data for alfalfa and grass hay inputs were according to Pimentel and Pimentel and Barnhart et al. Wheat straw was considered to be a by-product of wheat production, and all fertilizer inputs were allocated to the grain portion of the wheat crop. Emissions of N 2 O from fertilizer application, manure application to crops, and manure applied while grazing were estimated from the factors published by the IPCC Emissions of CO 2 from fertilizer and pesticide manufacture were derived from West and Marland , and similar emissions from fossil fuel combustion for crop production were calculated from US EPA Pasture-based US beef production systems originally served to use land that was unsuitable for crop production because of characteristics such as unfavorable topography or soil type Cardon et al.

For the purposes of this study, all pasture was considered to be permanent i. Sequestration occurring as a result of land use change is a dynamic process following a logarithmic decay curve. Because of a lack of reliable data and the number of assumptions involved in applying a land use factor to cropland, C sequestered into soil was not included in the model calculations for either time point. Voluntary water intake for mature cows was modeled according to Beckett and Oltjen , with water intakes for all other classes of animal calculated from the equation derived by Meyer et al.

Annual electricity use for cattle feedlots was kWh per animal, prorated according to BW Ludington and Peterson, Data from the Energy Information Administration provided the data from which to calculate a nationwide factor for CO 2 emissions from electricity generation, which was applied to electricity use within the model.

There is a paucity of information available on the distances traveled by animals between subsystems within either the and production system. As noted by Forde et al. From examining the major states involved with cow-calf, stocker, and feedlot production at both time points, it seems unlikely that, for reasons of animal welfare and economic cost, animals would be moved between the furthest points.

A value of km was therefore adopted as the average distance for animal movements between the cow-calf, stocker, and feedlot operations for both and According to Shields and Mathews , few animals traveled more than km between the feedlot and slaughter plant; therefore, this distance was adopted for the final transportation stage in both years. Energy use for corn transportation was generated by comparing the major corn-producing states with those containing the greatest number of feedlot animals for each year.

Assuming that moving corn for the shortest distance was the most economically favorable solution within both and , weighted averages for in-state transport set at km and out-of-state transport distance from the center of 1 feedlot state to the center of the nearest corn-producing state based on the proportion of total beef produced within each state were calculated. The final average transport distances for corn were km and km Livestock industries face an ongoing challenge in producing sufficient food to fulfill consumer demand while reducing resource use and GHG emissions per unit of food.

Despite a subsequent public admission that comparisons between GHG emissions from livestock production and transport were flawed after in-depth scientific review by independent scientists Pitesky et al. Improved productive efficiency resource input per unit of food output is a major factor affecting variability in GHG emissions per unit of food.

Global data are not yet available for the beef industry; however, a FAO report detailing GHG emissions from the worldwide dairy industry demonstrated the inverse relationship between efficiency and CO 2 -equivalents per kilogram of milk produced. Gains in productive efficiency allow increases in food production to be achieved concurrently with reductions in environmental impact.

Nonetheless, improved efficiency is often perceived by the consumer as being achieved at the expense of animal health and welfare Singer and Mason, On a single animal basis, this concept is exemplified by Figure 2 , which shows the difference in maintenance and growth requirements on a daily basis between 2 steers, representative of these classes of animals within the and beef finishing systems. Although the total daily energy requirement is increased in the animal, a combination of reduced time from birth to slaughter and increased BW at slaughter decreases total energy use per kilogram of beef produced.

As shown in Figure 3 , average beef yield per animal has increased from kg in to kg in Although total beef production was increased in Energy values represent the average maintenance and growth requirements for steers destined for slaughter within the beef system.

Requirements were weighted according to the number of days spent within the cow-calf, stocker, and feedlot system, and in the case of the system, to account for the proportion of yearling-fed beef, calf-fed beef, and calf-fed dairy steers within the slaughter population. Changes in total US beef production, number of commercial cattle slaughtered, and beef yield per animal from to When assessing the environmental impact of livestock production, it is not sufficient to simply consider the animals directly associated with food output i.

In a homogenous beef market such as that seen in , where all animals reared specifically for beef originate from the beef supporting population, slaughter population size is the major driver for the magnitude of the supporting population.

Provision of surplus calves from the dairy industry allows more beef to be produced without a concurrent increase in the supporting population. Through a combination of the reduced slaughter population size, calf input from the dairy industry and reduced mortality rates conferred by a better understanding of nutrition, health, and animal management over the past 30 yr, the total population support beef animals plus slaughter animals required to produce 1 billion kg of beef was reduced by It is also worth noting that the proportion of cull animals within the slaughter population was considerably less in the system A proportional reduction in cull animals entering the slaughter system shifts pressure up the chain, necessitating an increase in feedlot beef production to maintain supply.

This serves to further highlight the improvements in efficiency that allow the modern production system to use fewer animals to produce 1 billion kg of beef. The hierarchy of nutrient partitioning dictates that the maintenance requirement of an animal must be satisfied before productivity pregnancy, lactation, or growth can occur. The daily maintenance nutrient requirement can therefore be considered to be a fixed cost of beef production, both on an individual animal and herd basis.

Management practices that improve animal and herd productivity and reduce the nonproductive proportion of the lifetime of an animal will reduce the total maintenance cost per unit of beef produced.

Within the supporting population, the major factors that improve productivity are reproductive efficiency number of live births per cow, calving interval , age at first calving heifers or service bulls , replacement rate, and mortality rate. In terms of nutrient requirements, pregnancy, lactation, and growth are classified as a production process, requiring extra nutrients above basal daily maintenance.

However, in contrast to pregnancy or lactation in which a product calf, milk is harvested from the live animal, the time period between growth and slaughter in growing and finishing animals may essentially be considered a nonproductive period because animal protein is only collected after the point of slaughter.

The total daily maintenance cost was increased in both growing animals and in the supporting herd as a consequence of genetic selection for mature BW and growth rate. Nonetheless, a considerable portion of the total maintenance requirement associated with beef production may therefore be reduced by improving growth rate through nutrition, genetics, and productivity-enhancing technologies, the combination of which reduce the time taken to reach slaughter BW. It is notable that the average number of days on feed was increased in the population compared with the population Table 1 , which seems counter to the earlier argument regarding improved productivity.

However, this is simply a question of semantics; days on feed accounts for the time within the feedlot, hence the increase in the population, which contained a greater proportion of calf-fed animals. Simply accounting for days on feed may be misleading in systems that contain a stocker stage as in the example; thus total time to slaughter should be the metric under consideration.

Carbon is the fundamental unit of energy within animal systems; thus differences in total maintenance energy can be considered to be a proxy for both resource use and GHG emissions.

It is biochemically impossible to maintain a system with a greater net C output than input, for example, forage-based extensive systems with characteristically low growth rates have increased land, energy, and water use and GHG output per unit of beef produced Capper, In contrast to previous studies examining the environmental impact of production systems separated by both time and typical management practices Rydberg and Jansen, ; Capper et al.

The infrastructure similarities between the and production systems mean that the former cannot be classified as an extensive production system, yet efficiency gains within the system reduced resource use per unit of beef Table 2. For example, it is acknowledged that, despite the low adoption rate of AI in the beef industry USDA, b , genetic advances between and have resulted in modern-day beef animals that differ phenotypically from the Angus and Hereford breeds of Comparison of resource inputs, waste output, and greenhouse gas emissions associated with producing 1 billion kg of beef in US production systems characteristic of the years and Improvements in efficiency between and reduced total feedstuff use within the beef production system by The magnitude of this difference compared with the difference in total energy use can be attributed to the increase in nutrient concentration of total feedstuffs in vs.

It should be noted that the quantity of harvested feed i. Because of a paucity of comparative data for , feed wastage is not included in the current analysis.

If feed wastage were included, the difference between the 2 systems would be expected to increase slightly because there is no reason to expect that wastage was proportionally less in than in An intrinsic link exists between the quantity and quality of feed required for beef production and the area of land required to support this system. As the global population continues to increase, the land area devoted to animal agriculture, specifically ruminant livestock, is likely to continue to be an issue of major debate.

The reason for this difference is not immediately clear but may be attributed to the underlying assumption that highly productive pasture was used for grazing and silage production in the European model. Several authors claim that world hunger could be abrogated if meat consumption decreased considerably Pimentel and Pimentel, ; Millward and Garnett, because the quantity of land currently used to raise livestock could instead be used for human food crop production.

There are several implicit flaws contained within this theory, including the assumption that a vegetarian or vegan diet would be acceptable to the global population, which is negated by the predictions of increased global milk and meat requirements by the FAO , and the false assumption that crop production could be maintained for a wholly vegan population without an increasing reliance on fossil fuel-based fertilizers Fairlie, Aside from these issues, the major point of contention is the supposition that land currently used to graze livestock could equally be used to grow corn, soybeans, or other human food crops.

Partitioning out the quantity of land used for cropping corn, soya, alfalfa vs. The quantity of both cropland and pasture land available for agricultural use in the United States has continually decreased since Lubowski et al. The cropping land released from the beef system could be used to grow other human food, yet pastureland used for ranching operations is generally unsuited for growing other crops due to climatic, topographic, or soil limitations.

Nonetheless, increasing competition for land resources between food production, industrial, and social uses is an inevitable consequence of population growth.

As the body of knowledge relating to the nutrient requirements and ration formulation for ruminant livestock has become more advanced, the beef industry has served as an invaluable receptacle for by-products from the human food and fiber industries. Incorporation of nutrient-rich by-products such as distillers grains, potatoes, and citrus pulp into cattle rations has allowed for further reductions in land use and the conversion of unwanted vegetable material into high-quality animal protein Fadel, By-product use within cattle rations is inherently region-specific and was therefore not accounted for within the current study; however, this omission overestimates the amount of land required for beef production in The importance of by-product feed utilization as a tool to reduce resource use in beef production should be noted.

At a superficial level, water appears to be an entirely renewable resource within the beef production system, with an ongoing cycle of water use from the atmosphere, through plant material into the animal, and then back into the atmosphere.

Although , km 3 of precipitation falls onto the surface of the earth annually Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, , fresh water supplies are increasingly scarce due to a combination of excessive withdrawals, contamination, and loss of wetlands. All food production has an embedded water cost, but livestock production is often cited as a major consumer.

Estimates of water use for beef production range from 3, L per kilogram of boneless beef Beckett and Oltjen, to 20, L per kilogram of beef originating from the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals PETA , the greatest values often being used to promote the suggestion that livestock production is too resource intensive to be environmentally sustainable.

However, the authors used global averages to calculate water usage, which were then assumed to be representative of individual beef production systems, regardless of region or productivity. By contrast, the thorough analysis of water consumption within beef production published by Beckett and Oltjen with system boundaries extending from feed production to processing reports the aforementioned water-use figure of 3, L per kilogram of boneless beef.

The results shown in Table 2 demonstrate that water use as modeled within the current study is equivalent to 1, L per kilogram of beef in , a decrease of System boundaries within the current study were extended as far as the slaughterhouse door, thus processing was excluded and the functional unit was based on HCW rather than boneless weight.

However, it is predicted that values similar to those obtained by Beckett and Oltjen would be reported if the system boundaries were extended to include the processing stage. As demonstrated by the other resource use metrics within the current study, improved animal productivity was the main factor affecting the reduced water use per kilogram of beef in compared with , yet crop productivity yield per hectare also played an important role. The proportion of irrigated cropland corn for silage and grain, soybeans, pasture increased between and for all crops within the current study, with changes in irrigation water use per hectare varying between crops.

Average US precipitation and temperature data from the National Climatic Data Center for the 2 yr in question demonstrate that the 2 time points were climatically similar; thus differences in irrigation use may have been skewed by region-specific weather.

Livestock production industries within the United States have undergone considerable consolidation since the end of WWII, and the number of operations within all subsystems of the beef industry have declined over the past 30 yr as production has become increasingly specialized and region-specific. The quality of knowledge and modern computational resources relating to animal nutrient requirements and ration formulation are far superior to those available in This represents a critical move forward in US beef industry sustainability, which must continue to improve in the future.

Nonetheless, it is acknowledged that an industry-wide reduction in nutrient excretion does not imply a concurrent reduction in point-source water pollution incidents.

The C footprint of livestock production is one of the most widely discussed environmental issues within the current agricultural arena because of its association with nonrenewable resource consumption and climate change.

This is notable given that corn production is one of the major contributors to fossil fuel use within beef production and the average time period on a corn-based diet was increased in the production system. It is difficult to assess the C footprint of any production process in isolation. Without reference to a baseline number, the final result lacks context and is of limited value save for as a marker comparison for future studies.

A paucity of data are available on the changes in C footprint of other animal protein sources within the US livestock industry over time, with published literature to date being confined to dairy production Capper et al. Variations in methodology and system boundaries make interstudy comparisons difficult to validate; however, it is worth noting that the C footprint of the system was at the lower end of the range of values for beef reported by de Vries and de Boer and was within the limits reported by Nguyen et al.

Life cycle analyses of 3 beef-finishing scenarios calf-fed, yearling-fed, and grass-finished in the upper Midwestern United States were undertaken by Pelletier et al. Although these scenarios were undertaken as whole-system analyses, it is difficult to make a direct comparison or validation of the results as the finishing systems within each scenario in Pelletier et al.

Nonetheless, the trend for improved productivity and efficiency to reduce environmental impact was consistent with the calf-fed system in Pelletier et al.

Recent studies evaluating the C footprint of beef production practices characteristic of Brazil Cederberg et al. By contrast, Peters et al. The time point and methodology-specific nature of these studies means that conclusions cannot be drawn as to the relative environmental ranking of different global regions; however, it underlines the effect of system and efficiency variation upon environmental impact.

Because all surplus dairy calves were diverted into veal rather than beef production in , it is not surprising that the proportion of the total C footprint per unit of beef attributable to dairy production was less in 2. The extent to which resource use and waste output can be attributed to either system depends entirely on the allocation method used; thus further research is recommended to gather an indication of the environmental impact of the entire US large ruminant system.

Due to the lack of published data for animal and feedstuff transport for either year, the distances used within the current study had to be derived from crop and animal production site data and transport information from Foster et al.

Nonetheless, reliable data for vehicle carrying capacity and fuel efficiency were used to calculate fuel use and GHG emissions from transport; thus the proportional contribution of transportation to the total C footprint of beef production is unlikely to vary considerably from the results obtained. These data suggest that the potential opportunity to mitigate the environmental impact of beef production through transportation efficiency is limited.

The rationale behind the current study was not to definitively define the C footprint or environmental impact of US beef production, but rather to assess the effects of efficiency gains within the system between and It should be noted that the time point-specific nature of this data and the continuing evolution of the science behind environmental impact assessment means that definition of a single number to represent beef production is dangerous, if not impossible.

Given the uncertainties involved with gathering historical data relating to resource use, the data presented are not intended to represent the exact quantities of resource use or waste output within this study; however, the environmental impact differences between systems are important indicators of the effects of improved efficiency.

As conversations relative to sustainability continue, it is crucial to identify areas for future improvement within all sections of the chain, with the results of this paper and others within the literature used as benchmarks.

It is clear that improving productivity is key to reducing the environmental impact of beef production, yet anecdotal evidence from the current beef industry suggests that beef yield per animal has reached a plateau. Further investigation into the contributions made by improved growth rates, fertility, morbidity, mortality, and forage management are therefore essential to better understand and apply the management practices by which the industry can continue to provide sufficient animal protein to satisfy the market while continuing to reduce resource use and waste output per unit of beef.

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This is underlined by the ability of modern dairy cows to produce considerably more milk than their historical counterparts through improved welfare and reduced disease incidence LeBlanc et al. It is also clear that the environmental impact of the modern US dairy production system is considerably less than that of the historical system with substantial reductions in resource use feedstuffs, crop land, energy, and water , waste output manure, N, and P excretion , and GHG emissions.

The immediate challenge for the dairy industry is to actively communicate the gains made since World War II and the considerable potential for environmental mitigation yet to be gained through use of modern dairy production systems. AFRC Energy and Protein Requirements of Ruminants.

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De Vries , A. Overton , J. Fetrow , K. Leslie , S. Eicker , and G. Rogers Exploring the impact of sexed semen on the structure of the dairy industry. Eastridge , M.

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Meigs , E. The feeding of dairy cows for intensive milk production in practice. Mowrey , A. Spain Results of a nationwide survey to determine feedstuffs fed to lactating dairy cows. Nevens , W. All hot air? How do we demonstrate that ruminants are not environmental villains? A sustainable food supply - the role of animal health more. Beef and Lamb sustainability within the UK. Current status, challenges and opportunities more. Sustainability and One Health: Where are the knowledge gaps?

Integrating improved health, welfare and productivity to improve sustainability more. Going green by choosing milk, meat and eggs more. Challenging the rhetoric - how do we communicate some of the positive attributes of livestock sustainability? Vaccination and Sustainability more. Climate change, carbon and cows — what does it mean on the ground?

Food vs. Net zero via vet heroes - how can veterinary professionals mitigate environmental impacts? How do we sustain cattle industry sustainability? Sustainable livestock farming — how do we implement this from the crops to the cow? How do we improve cattle sustainability as we move towards ? Cattle industry sustainability - UCD lecture more.

Livestock sustainability — how do we maintain, improve and communicate it? Cattle Industry Sustainability more. Got milk? Not milk? Nut milk? Is dairy facing an existential crisis? Resilience depends on sustainability, but how do we make it happen? Sustainability and Health more. Back to the future — what has the U.

Are moo sustainable? Social and environmental issues in beef production more. Putting sustainability into context - what does it really mean for UK farmers? Fostering sustainable behaviour - Do we have culture on our side? A decade of continuous improvement - how far has the U. Sustainability of Small Ruminant Dairy Farming more. Going green - how do we communicate the cattle industry's environmental advantages? Field to Fork - What's new in dairy sustainability and how do we communicate it?

MEAT-ing environmentally friendly food demand - the vital role of British livestock more. Challenging the rhetoric — what can farmers do to turn the tide?

Myth-busting milk and meat — how can we win the battle of facts vs. Dairy good — we have so many reasons to be positive about livestock production more. Milking it - Challenges and opportunities in dairy sustainability more. Smashing the "modern farming is bad" myth - Defending the industry against radicals more. Can we milk the farming myths? Lessons learned from talking with activists during Februdairy more.

Sustainable livestock farming and the consumer more. Milk myth busting more. Milk, myths and malice: lessons learned from Februdairy more. Beef Cattle Sustainability more. Looking forward to a sustainable future — how do livestock productivity, health, efficiency and consumer perceptions interact?

All stakeholders within the livestock industry face a considerable challenge in achieving a balance between economic viability, environmental responsibility and social acceptability; and thus maintaining sustainable food production.

This is exacerbated by information about farming practices and management systems that accentuate consumer concerns and lead to confusion as to the roles of productivity, efficiency and animal health in modern agriculture. The suggestions that intensive farms or large-scale herds have negative effects on cattle health; that we can assess cattle welfare by applying anthropomorphic philosophies; and that extensive systems are inherently beneficial to the environment, appear to be intuitively correct.

Yet these suppositions are not as simple as they are often presented in mass media articles aimed at the consumer and lead to a multitude of other questions. Although it is tempting to try and overcome these issues by providing factual information, we cannot overcome negative publicity simply by supplying data and statistics. As an industry, we need to combine improved communication mechanisms with a better understanding of how consumer food-buying decisions are made to ensure future social acceptability and sustainability.

Communicating Animal Science to the General Public more. Optimizing efficiency in the cow-calf sector is an important step toward improving beef sustainability. The objective of the study was to use a model to identify the relative roles of reproductive, genetic, and nutritional management in The objective of the study was to use a model to identify the relative roles of reproductive, genetic, and nutritional management in minimizing beef production systems' environmental impact in an economically viable, socially acceptable manner.

An economic and environmental diet optimizer was used to identify ideal nutritional management of beef production systems varying in genetic and reproductive technology use. Eight management scenarios were compared to a least cost baseline: average U. Increases in diet cost attributable to reducing environmental impact were constrained to less than stakeholder willingness to pay for improved efficiency and reduced environmental impact.

Baseline land use, water use, and GHG emissions were m, L, and The NUT scenario, which assessed opportunities to improve sustainability by altering nutritional management alone, resulted in a simultaneous 1. The CW scenario improved calf uniformity and simultaneously decreased land use, water use, and GHG emissions by 3. Twinning resulted in a 9.

The EW scenario allowed for an 8. Improving genetic selection by using AI or by purchasing on-farm bulls based on their superior EPD demonstrated clear opportunity to improve sustainability. When genetic and reproductive technologies were adopted, up to a Given the modeling assumptions used in this study, optimizing nutritional management while concurrently improving genetic and reproductive efficiency may be promising avenues to improve productivity and sustainability of U.

Beef Production more. System sustainability balances environmental impact, economic viability and social acceptability. Assessment methods to investigate impacts of enterprise management and consumer decisions on sustainability of beef cattle operations are Assessment methods to investigate impacts of enterprise management and consumer decisions on sustainability of beef cattle operations are critically needed.

Tools of this nature are especially important given the predictions of climate variability and the dependence of beef production systems on forage availability. A model optimizing nutritional and pasture management was created to examine the environmental impact of beef production.

The model integrated modules calculating cradle-to-farm gate environmental impact, diet cost, pasture growth and willingness to pay WTP. Least-cost diet and pasture management options served as a baseline to which environmental-impact reducing scenarios were compared.

Economic viability was ensured by a constraint limiting change in diet cost to less than consumer WTP. Increased WTP was associated with improved social acceptability. Model outputs were evaluated by comparing to published data. Sensitivity analysis of the WTP constraint was conducted. A series of scenarios then examined how forecasted changes in precipitation patterns might alter forage supply and opportunities to reduce environmental impact in three regions in the United States.

On a national scale, single-objective optimization indicated individual reductions in greenhouse gases GHG , land use and water use of 3. Multi-objective optimization demonstrated that GHG, land and water use could be simultaneously reduced by 2. To achieve this change, cow—calf diets relied on grass hay, continuously- or rotationally-grazed irrigated and fertilized pasture as well as rotationally-grazed pasture.

Stocker diets used rotationally-grazed, irrigated and fertilized pasture and feedlot diets used grass hay as a forage source. The model was sensitive to consumer WTP. When alternative precipitation patterns were simulated, opportunities to decrease the environmental impact of beef production in the Pacific Northwest and Texas were reduced by precipitation changes; whereas opportunities in the Midwest improved.

Economic viability, rather than biological limitations, reduced the potential to improve environmental impact under future precipitation scenarios. Decreased spring rainfall resulted in lower pasture yields and required greater use of stored forages.

Related increases in diet cost reduced opportunities to appropriate funds toward investment in environmental-impact reducing pasture management strategies. The model developed in this study is a robust tool that can be used to assess the impacts of enterprise management and consumer decisions on beef production sustainability. Life-cycle assessment LCA is the preferred methodology to assess carbon footprint per unit of milk.

The objective of this case study was to apply an LCA method to compare carbon footprints of high-performance confinement and grass-based The objective of this case study was to apply an LCA method to compare carbon footprints of high-performance confinement and grass-based dairy farms.

Physical performance data from research herds were used to quantify carbon footprints of a high-performance Irish grass-based dairy system and a top-performing United Kingdom UK confinement dairy system. Life-cycle assessment was applied using the same dairy farm greenhouse gas GHG model for all dairy systems. The model estimated all on- and off-farm GHG sources associated with dairy production until milk is sold from the farm in kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalents CO2-eq and allocated emissions between milk and meat.

The carbon footprint of milk was calculated by expressing GHG emissions attributed to milk per tonne of energy-corrected milk ECM. However, without grassland carbon sequestration, the grass-based and confinement dairy systems had similar carbon footprints per tonne of ECM. Emission algorithms and allocation of GHG emissions between milk and meat also affected the relative difference and order of dairy system carbon footprints.

This indicates that further harmonization of several aspects of the LCA methodology is required to compare carbon footprints of contrasting dairy systems. Although differences between studies are partly explained by methodological inconsistency, the comparison suggests that potential exists to reduce the carbon footprint of milk in each of the nations by implementing practices that improve productivity.

The objective of this study was to use a precision nutrition model to simulate the relationship between diet formulation frequency and dairy cattle performance across various climates. Predicted daily milk yield MY , metabolizable energy ME balance, and dry matter intake DMI were recorded for each frequency-variability combination.

Economic analysis was conducted to calculate the predicted revenue over feed and labor costs. Formulating monthly, rather than seasonally, may be a more feasible alternative as this requires a margin of error of only 2.

Feeding systems with a low margin of error must be developed to better take advantage of the benefits of precision nutrition. Dairy Science , Dairy cattle nutrition , and Dairy production. Animal Feed vs. Within the next 40 years, the global livestock industry will have to considerably increase production in order to supply the population with animal-source foods, yet the industry must concurrently improve the three metrics of Within the next 40 years, the global livestock industry will have to considerably increase production in order to supply the population with animal-source foods, yet the industry must concurrently improve the three metrics of sustainability — economic viability, environmental stewardship and social responsibility.

Environmental stewardship is currently the area for which animal agriculture is under the most scrutiny, as many consumers perceive that animal-source foods have an unacceptable environmental cost.

These concerns are intensified by activist group campaigns propounding that reducing meat consumption will have significant environmental mitigation effects. Animal-source foods have been shown to be essential dietary components for improving health of inhabitants in developing regions, for whom such foods are often economically unavailable.

Moreover, reducing meat consumption in developed countries has a negligible effect upon national greenhouse gas GHG emissions and leads to further questions with regards to the implications for use of animal and plant by-products, and the difficulty of producing human food crops on grazed pasturelands. Improving livestock productivity has positive sustainability implications as it reduces resource use and GHG emissions whilst improving economic viability, yet it is often difficult to attain consumer acceptance of modern best practices and technologies.

Productivity metrics that enhance sustainability include milk and meat yield, growth rates, feed efficiency, calving rate, parasite control and use of growth-enhancing technologies. The global livestock industry is charged with providing sufficient animal source foods to supply the global population while improving the environmental sustainability of animal production.

Improved productivity within dairy and beef Improved productivity within dairy and beef systems has demonstrably reduced resource use and greenhouse gas emissions per unit of food over the past century through the dilution of maintenance effect.

Further environmental mitigation effects have been gained through the current use of technologies and practices that enhance milk yield or growth in ruminants; however, the social acceptability of continued intensification and use of productivity-enhancing technologies is subject to debate. As the environmental impact of food production continues to be a significant issue for all stakeholders within the field, further research is needed to ensure that comparisons among foods are made based on both environmental impact and nutritive value to truly assess the sustainability of ruminant products.

The objective of this study was to quantify the environmental and economic impact of withdrawing growth-enhancing technologies GET from the U. A deterministic model based on the metabolism and nutrient Two production systems were compared: one using GET steroid implants, in-feed ionophores, in-feed hormones, and beta-adrenergic agonists where approved by FDA at current adoption rates and the other without GET use.

Both systems were modeled using characteristic management practices, population dynamics, and production data from U. The economic impact and global trade and carbon implications of GET withdrawal were calculated based on feed savings. Withdrawing GET from U. The projected increased costs of U. To compensate for the increase in U. The objective of this study was to assess environmental impact, economic viability and social acceptability of three beef production systems with differing levels of efficiency.