Production of safe and healthy high quality food for human population, preservation of stable rural social economic infrastructure and sustainable use of agricultural land and animal resources are important goals of European livestock sector. Research and innovation in the livestock sector will play an important role in development of more effi cient and sustainable strategies for supply of hea...

Biotechnological achievements of recent years have emerged as powerful tool to improve quality attributes of livestock products including milk and meat products. Biotechnological approaches can be employed for improving productivity, economy, physicochemical and nutritional attributes of a wide range of livestock products. The target areas of biotechnological research in the field of livestock ...

Livestock production impacts air and water quality, ocean health, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on regional to global scales and it is the largest use of land globally. Quantifying the environmental impacts of the various livestock categories, mostly arising from feed production, is thus a grand challenge of sustainability science. Here, we quantify land, irrigation water, and reactive nit...

To characterise the urban livestock keeping practices and constraints in Kisumu municipality, Kenya, a questionnaire survey was carried out. Thirty-four contact farmers were interviewed on general farm characteristics and production constraints. The farming activities were categorised as either livestock only (41%), or mixed crops and livestock (59%). The surveyed farmers kept mainly cattle (10...

Introduction Because of historical, geographical and demographic conditions Bhutan has a comparative advantage for livestock production. In spite of this favourable conditions the high expectations from development interventions of the seventies and eighties could only be partly realized. After thirty years of intensive breeding programmes, with high inputs of financial and human resources, Bhu...

We evaluate the relationship of positive cases of rabies with the continuing expansion of livestock production, and analyse the trends of this zoonosis in human population in the state of Pará, Brazilian Amazon. The distribution of rabies cases was recorded between 1999 and 2004. Of 148 cases of rabies, 21% were in humans and 79% in non-human mammals. The rapid growth in livestock numbers seems...

The evolutionary processes that have enabled Bos taurus cattle to establish around the globe are at the core to the future success of livestock production. Our study focuses on the history of cattle domestication including the last 60 years of B. taurus breeding programmes in both favourable and unfavourable environments and its consequences on evolution and fitness of cattle. We discuss the em...

Landless systems are used throughout the world, under temperate and tropical conditions as well as in developed and developing nations. The major factor determining the use of landless systems appears to be the relative cost of grains and the availability of feed byproducts. Prices of animal products are also determinants of the system used. There are advantages and disadvantages in using these...

Our ability to modify whole animal genetics has grown considerably in the last two decades. We have seen concerns regarding food safety and protection of breeding rights of genetically modified animals compel redirection of genetic engineering experimentation toward biomedical applications. Indeed, it has been nearly twenty years since the first transgenic livestock appeared in the literature, ...

Results obtained in the QLIF subproject 4 have provided recommendations to farmers and stakeholders on how to improve organic livestock farming. Progress was made in areas of housing, feeding and management. Often the recommendations are straightforward, and ready for implementation. In other areas challenges remain. In some cases, progress with respect to one objective has created new challeng...