Balancing Meat Production and Environmental Sustainability to Maintaining Global Food Security

By Bruce Cochrane

The manager of sustainable development with Manitoba Pork says balancing the need for affordable meat production with environmental sustainability will be key to maintaining global food security.

Earlier this month the Paris based International Meat Secretariat reaffirmed its commitment to tackling climate change by focusing on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Mike Teillet, the Manager of Sustainable Development with Manitoba Pork, says there are estimates that the population will reach as many as 9.6 billion people by 2050 but the demand for meat and livestock products is actually growing much faster than that.

Mike Teillet-Manitoba Pork:
It's estimated that the demand for meat protein and livestock products will grow by about 70 percent over that same time period so, even though the population might only grow by about 30 percent, the demand for livestock products and livestock protein is expected to be about double that growth.

One of the reasons for that is because the people in the world are also getting more affluent and, as people get more income, the demand for meat and livestock products goes up.

So we anticipate that there'll be significant increase in demand for livestock and meat  and livestock products and so we are attempting to become more efficient to meet that demand and we think we would have to continue to do so into the foreseeable future.

Teillet says, if livestock production is curtailed because of the adoption of some kind of regulation or standard, that will translate into more expensive livestock production and mean less affordable meat.
He says this would mean people around the world might go without meat and meat is the principle way that most people get protein at an affordable cost.

source: farmscape