Livestock and fish: Around 40 stakeholders participated in SUSFANS 3rd SCG Workshop

Vienna - Around 40 persons participated in the 3rd Workshop of the SUSFANS project on September 28, 2017. In the focus of the meeting, which took place in Vienna, Austria, was the role of livestock and fish for a sustainable food and nutrition security in Europe.

After a presentation of the SUSFANS conceptual Framework by Monika Zurek, the stakeholders got insight in the sustainability assessment of the current state of livestock, fish, fruits and vegetables supply chains. SUSFANS researcher Hannah van Zanten presented important outcomes of SUSFANS case studies, which aim at identifying different pathways that enable to find direction in achieving sustainable and healthy diets within the EU. A possible solution could be to increase the intake of fish. Strongly recommended was an increased intake of fruit and vegetable.

Furthermore, innovative ideas on the pathways to seafood and livestock production were given to the audience. Friederike Ziegler showed that the consumption of seafood in the European Union is with 25 kg live-weight relatively high in a global perspective. The increasing global seafood demand could be met by: an improved management, changing from feed fish to food fish, increasing the use of "non-edible” processing, by-products and leftovers (”circularfish”), the reduction of supply chain losses and strengthening the use of aquacultures.

On the livestock production side, Hannah van Zanten suggested to increase the crop yields per unit of land/energy, improving feed efficiency and life-time productivity, to use fast-growing broilers, change from grass-based to mixed ruminant systems, take measures to improve improve animal health and feeding animals with novel feed sources.

On the consumer's side, solutions could be to become vegetarian or vegan, replace “red meat” by “white meat” or “fish”, replace animal protein with alternative protein sources and lower footprint per kg protein & kca.

This and the latest outcome of the SUSFANS resarch on alternative protein sources and the opinions of European consumers on this topic, the role of the Paris agreement and the value of leftovers for feeding livestock were debated in the stakeholder groups.