In our previous blog, we briefly highlighted the importance of animal welfare as part of any sustainability programs intended for the animal industries. In this blog, we will talk about animal health status and how it influences sustainability-related initiatives.
The importance of animal health in the context of sustainability is generally shown in several areas:
- Direct impact on the animal production systems. Diseases can cause sub-optimal production performance and/or mortality in animals, depending on the nature of a particular disease. This can in turn result in lesser availability of safe and nutritious resources for human consumption. In addition, disease outbreaks in animals can also have significant negative effects on economic viability of the operations where these animals are raised.
- Increases in the environmental footprint of affected animals or flocks/herds as a result of disease occurrence and/or mortality.
- Consequences for human health in the context of zoonotic diseases (i.e., diseases that can be transferred from animals to humans), foodborne pathogens and antimicrobial resistance.
Disease prevention/control (including biosecurity and vaccinations), diagnosis and treatment are generally key measures for implementing a successful animal health strategy. However, the implementation and success rate of these strategies can vary considerably in different regions of the world as there are substantial dissimilarities in animal production systems from both quantitative and qualitative standpoints.
In a world that is currently shattered by the COVID-19 pandemic, it is clear that there are many areas in the animal health sector in different parts of the world that need improvement. In order to continuously maintain and/or enhance the health status of food-producing animals (e.g., poultry, swine and cattle) for access to safe, affordable and sustainable foods for human consumption, it is critical to have a collaborative, innovative and solution-oriented mindset at both national and international levels. This mindset warrants formation of a strong alliance among different groups including animal farming, local/regional/global animal health entities, allied industry (animal health and nutrition companies), societal organizations and the governments.