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Reconciling trade-offs in pig farming requires a change in mitigation approach

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Reconciling trade-offs in pig farming requires a change in mitigation approach | Nature Food

We found trade-offs among the environmental and animal welfare impacts of pig farms — those that had low greenhouse gas emissions typically had low land use but poor animal welfare and high antimicrobial use. Some farms performed well in all four impacts, but these farms were not consistently associated with any particular farm or label type.

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1.
Balmford, A. et al. The environmental costs and benefits of high-yield farming. Nat. Sustain. 1, 477–485 (2018). This article highlights how few studies examine more than one impact of farming systems.
2.
Van Boeckel, T. P. et al. Global trends in antimicrobial use in food animals. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 112, 5649–5654 (2015). This article quantifies current and future antimicrobial use in livestock and finds pigs to be the highest users.
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Poore, J. & Nemecek, T. Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers. Science 360, 987–992 (2018). This article quantifies the environmental impacts of farming sectors and highlights the relatively high impacts of pig production relative to many other sectors.
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Balmford, A. Concentrating vs. spreading our footprint: how to meet humanity’s needs at least cost to nature. J. Zool. 315, 79–109 (2021). This article explains the importance and relevance of land-use footprints for biodiversity.
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Bartlett, H., Balmford, A., Holmes, M. A. & Wood, J. L. N. Advancing the quantitative characterization of farm animal welfare. Proc. R. Soc. B 290, 20230120 (2023). This article describes the methods we used to quantify animal welfare.

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This is a summary of: Bartlett, H. et al. Trade-offs in the externalities of pig production are not inevitable. Nat. Food https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-024-00921-2(2024).

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Reconciling trade-offs in pig farming requires a change in mitigation approach. Nat Food (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-024-00922-1

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-024-00922-1

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