Livestock production and sustainability

The World Commission on Environment and Development to study the relationships between ecological health, economic development and social equality was set up by the United Nations in 1983. The commission published a report in 1987, Our Common Future, which defined sustainable development as, ‘meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs’. While other definitions of sustainability certainly exist, this one seems to me at least to still be appropriate 35 years later. Sustainability is usually considered to be made up of three core concepts or ‘pillars’ — economic, environmental and social — and these can be applied in almost all facets of life. In particular, commercial activity at many levels from global economic developments to our personal food, housing, transport or other life choices. Everything we do has environmental, economic and social ramifications both up stream and down.

No one in the UK could have failed to see the impact, at least in the media, of the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) held in Glasgow in November 2021. Nor, if you talk to young people, would you fail to understand the significance they put on the matter discussed at that conference. I have three teenage children growing up in the West of Scotland, the focus and understanding of these matters amongst their generation cannot be ignored. So, what can we as livestock veterinary surgeons do to make our businesses, and those of our clients more sustainable?