Animal Nutrition and Welfare in Sustainable Production Systems

Dear Colleagues,

Today, food animal production systems demand high energy, land, chemicals, and water—all of which are increasingly becoming scarce. Thus, change and innovation are required in many animal production systems to meet present and future demand for animal products sustainably. During the last four decades, inexpensive grain, energy, and protein have enabled the economic development of intensive meat, eggs, and milk production systems based on feeding grains and other ingredients sourced from far-off places. The poultry and pig intensive production systems have become highly capital intensive, and they have resulted in many environmental challenges.

If the price of feedstuffs rises above a critical level, they might even become economically and environmentally unviable. These issues may become magnified due to increasing competition for arable land for food, feed, and biofuel production. So far, in many situations, the feed has been produced, and nutrition has been balanced to achieve maximum production, with high economic benefits. However, it has also contributed to ecosystem degradation and global warming through methane and nitrous oxide. Moreover, animal production results in increased energy consumption at every step, and even more so in intensive systems. These situations demand attention to examine the excessive use of resources and consider ways to adopt more efficient processes and procedures.

Food animal feed, nutrition, and welfare are the foundation of successful animal systems. They directly or indirectly affect the entire animal production sector, associated services, public goods, and services, including animal productivity, health and welfare, product quality and safety, land use and land-use change, and greenhouse gas emissions. The sustainability of food animal nutrition and welfare is crucial in developing animal production across production systems. The sustainable increase in animal productivity, which is key to meeting the large current and future demand for animal origin products, cannot be achieved without sustainable animal nutrition and welfare.

Sustainable animal nutrition and welfare are expected to be beneficial for the food animal, the environment, and society. Additionally, they are likely to generate socioeconomic benefits, furthering poverty alleviation and food security efforts. This requires researchers, extension workers, science managers, policy-makers, industry, and farmers.

This Special Issue welcomes papers focused on the latest knowledge and innovations in sustainable animal production, animal nutrition, animal welfare, animal behavior, agricultural economy, policy and management, sustainable feedstuff technology, and food safety principles. Both review and research papers are welcome to show originality and give a significant contribution to the scope of the Special Issue.

Prof. dr Nikola Puvača
Prof. dr Vincenzo Tufarelli
Prof. dr Eva Voslarova
Guest Editors

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