Abstracts - Environnement

With rising feed prices and sustainability being the watchword, it's time to think about ways to conserve resources, especially feed. As the largest cost item on livestock farms (60%), feed is a good way to make farms more self-sufficient and/or to reduce costs. By-products from the agri-food industry that can be used in animal feed seem to be a promising way to feed ruminants at a regional level, especially as such a sector is likely to be part of a circular economy approach. By-products from plant production, especially fruit and vegetables, have a particularly high potential for use in animal rations. Many other types of residues from processing industries could also be used, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.

Given the global demand of proteins predicted for 2050, a transition of our current agricultural model is required. An agroecological model proposes to meet these needs while producing with ecological foresight, but also considering social and economic issues. Livestock rearing in order to meet protein needs is where agroecological principles and the more industrial accepted term of sustainable intensification overlap in certain areas. Multiple definitions of sustainable intensification have been proposed, however, many have a focus on an increase in productivity on already cultivated land while reducing environmental degradation and sparing natural habitats from agricultural expansion. Animal products, as demonstrated within this review, can contribute to a global diet within a limitation of 11–23 g of protein/person/day through agroecological practices. Animal protein can be included if livestock are fed only on pasture, waste or by-products; no scenario exists in which livestock could continue to be fed on human-edible crops. Agroecological practices are already being used by smallholders globally, however, barriers exist to scaling up and out these practices, which require a shift in the policy framework to value and transfer the knowledge of agroecological farmers and increase their access to public resources such as infrastructures. As currently both large-scale agri-industry and smallholders provide for the global population, a strategy that includes both could be favoured. Coupling the upscaling of agroecological practices used by smallholders and transitioning intensive agriculture towards an agroecological model using sustainable intensification as a bridge to implement agroecological practices could help ensure global protein requirements in 2050.

The breeding of local breeds with small or very small numbers of animals is currently attracting renewed interest because it is in line with agro-ecological issues and meets consumer aspirations. This article focuses on the Maraîchine cattle breed, which is currently used for meat production. Within the framework of a research-action project, researchers built a protocol with farmers to evaluate the nutritional and sensory quality of their beef. After presenting the context of the Maraîchine cow farm, the article presents the experimental design and the results obtained. Ten grass-finished beef cattle and 8 concentrate-finished beef cattle from 7 farms were recruited. The analyses were performed on flank steak and focused on the biochemical and metabolic characteristics of the muscle, sensory qualities and rheological properties, intramuscular lipid content and fatty acid composition, and finally, on the antioxidant potential of the meat. Meat is on average richer in polyunsaturated fatty acids and less rich in saturated fatty acids than other meat breeds. The grass finishing diet leads to leaner meats with a better health value. Antioxidant defenses are very high and grass-fed finishing mainly strengthens exogenous antioxidant defenses. Regarding sensory and rheological qualities, grass finishing does not affect the color of the meat but results in a less tender meat despite an increase in juiciness.

The "Dublin Declaration" was initiated by the members of the Committee who organized the "International Summit on the Role of Meat in Society - What Science Says" which took place on 19 and 20 October 2022 in Dublin at Teagasc (the Irish Agriculture and Food Development Authority which provides integrated research, advisory and training services to the agriculture and food industry and rural communities). Animal breeding and meat production contribute to the health and well-being of animals and people, maintain ecological balances and guarantee socio-economic livelihoods, states this declaration, signed by around 220 scientists from all over the world. as of October 27, 2022.

The consumption of red meat (beef, mutton, pork) is the subject of recurrent criticism. However, while it increases the risk of cancer in big eaters, the nutritional benefits of its incorporation into the weekly diet are numerous: intake of high-quality proteins, highly digestible iron and vitamin B12. The consumption of water taken from aquatic resources (600 liters per kilo of steak) is far from the 15,000 liters often claimed which is a value that includes rainwater. It is inaccurate to assert that cattle farming leads to an "unacceptable" waste of plant proteins: in France, it sometimes produces more proteins consumable by humans than it consumes. By enhancing the value of grasslands, which they are able to transform into meat and milk, cattle and sheep contribute to biodiversity, soil carbon sequestration, groundwater recharge with good quality water, land use planning. However, there is one criticism that must be made of livestock farming: it is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Geneticists, animal feed specialists and farmers must work together to reduce this impact. Finally, animal welfare must be guaranteed. Otherwise, consumers could turn to foods with lower impact on the climate: pulses, plant-based mince and even cultured meat.

Agricultural land used to produce our food is a limited resource and must be preserved both in quantity and in quality. French ADEME (Barbier et al., 2020a; 2020b) and Australian (Ridoutt et al., 2020; Ridoutt and Garcia 2020) studies have developed methods for assessing land footprint of vegetal and animal agricultural production. We inferred the land footprint of typical French and Australian diets. These studies provide contrasting images regarding the footprint of different types of meat. In this article, we seek to understand and analyze reasons for differences. The ADEME study does not differentiate the different types of agricultural land; it brings out beef and sheep meats, produced mostly from grassland systems, with the largest footprint. Conversely, Australian studies accounts for agricultural land according to their potential yield; they do account for permanent grasslands, and therefore highlight monogastric meats (pork, poultry) as the most impacting ones. Thus, Ridoutt method leads to a relatively limited footprint of extensive livestock farming, mostly linked to grass consumption, and more broadly of ruminant meats, compared to meats from monogastric breeding that essentially feed on cereals and therefore use arable land. In terms of diets, those methodological differences lead to large differences in the meat share (all types of meat combined) of diet land footprint: it is three times less for Australian diets with a comparable meat consumption with respect to the French diet. Considering the many ecosystem services provided by grazeland, we therefore recommend the use of the Ridoutt methodology for the calculation of agricultural land footprint.