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Report: Animal agriculture remains committed to sustainability

The animal agriculture industry remains committed to environment stewardship and animal welfare, according to a new report from the Animal Agriculture Alliance.

Hannah Thompson-Weeman, vice president of communications, says producers are doing their part to improve the environment and today greenhouse gas emissions from livestock production are less than 4 percent.

“That number has decreased with the technology that industries are putting in place,” she says. “Dairy, for example, the industry has reduced it’s carbon footprint by more than 60 percent since the 1940s, in the beef industry cattle ranchers have reduced their carbon footprint by 16 percent since the 1970s, and pig farmers are using 75 percent less land today.”

She tells Brownfield another highlight is that there are animal welfare programs in all sectors of the industry.

“The National Chicken Council’s Animal Welfare Guidelines is widely adopted within the poultry industry, there’s Pork Quality Assurance in the hog industry, and in the dairy industry there’s the farm program and 98 percent of the U.S. milk supply is from farms that are enrolled in that program,” she says.

Thompson-Weeman says the report confirms what the industry already knows: farmers are commitment to sustainability.

Although sustainability has many different definitions, the alliance says to those in agriculture it means using natural resources efficiently and caring for the land, air, water, and wildlife.

The report covers nine industries: dairy, beef, veal, pork, chicken, turkey, egg, sheep, and aquaculture.

Audio: Hannah Thompson-Weeman, Animal Agriculture Alliance