Natural Supplement in Sustainable Farming—Potential of Functional Feed

Dear Colleagues, 

Food systems today are at the crossroads of major and highly interdependent health, ecological, and economic issues. At a time when we need to feed a population that is expected to reach 9 to 10 billion people by 2050, it is becoming increasingly clear that the intensive food systems that are widely used around the world today are not sustainable in terms of consumption of natural resources, impacts on the climate and biodiversity, or even on health. Indeed, the high level of productivity made possible by the intensification of agriculture has been achieved at the cost of damage to biodiversity and soil quality, which is slowly but surely eroding agricultural productive capital, thus compromising our future capacity to produce.

These intensive production systems have been accompanied, since the 1950s, by an increasing, sometimes excessive, use of antibiotics in animals. Unfortunately, the massive and sometimes abusive use of such drugs has contributed to the emergence of bacterial resistance to antibiotics. Given the interconnections between human health, animal health, and the environment, the “One Health” approach is essential to effectively combat antibiotic resistance.

Livestock feed must also be sustainable and based on nutritional elements, from sustainable raw materials constituting all or part of the ration, in order to cover the needs of maintenance, growth, production and reproduction, health, as well as specific behaviors of animals, while falling within the framework of sustainable development. Today, the link between zoonoses, the food system, and the deforestation resulting from industrial livestock farming is more and more evident and is the subject of more and more research.

In the face of objections raised about the sustainability of intensive agricultural systems, a multiperforming model that is both competitive and sustainable must be promoted.

For this Special Issue, we encourage leading scientists working on sustainable animal production to submit original research and/or review articles.

Dr. Nassim Moula
Guest Editor

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