Food animal agriculture in 2020

Changing attitudes to welfare will drive changes to farm systems. Photo: Clive Dalton
Changing attitudes to welfare will drive
changes to farm systems.
Photo: Clive Dalton

How will food animals be farmed 12 years from now, and how will changing attitudes to animal welfare shape farm systems? To gain insight into US approaches to these questions, Jason Frost, Technical Adviser at the New Zealand Embassy in Washington, recently attended a symposium on the future structure of animal agriculture in the United States and its impact on future food production.

The symposium is one of a series on future trends in animal agriculture organised by the US Department of Agriculture’s Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service (CSREES) agency. Speakers covered the spectrum from industry, academia, government and animal advocacy groups. They presented their perspectives on what agriculture could or should look like in 2020, the economic changes that would impact on the agriculture industry over the next 12 years, the role of regulators in food animal production monitoring and auditing, the cultural differences between scientists in the United States and Europe and how this impacted upon their views on animal welfare, the role of universities, the future of global standards for food production, outsourcing of animal production to developing countries and its impacts on animal welfare and the impacts of biotechnology on animal welfare.

Although not as prominent as in previous years, there was still a strong focus on animal welfare issues, highlighted by a presentation from Wayne Pacelle, CEO of the Humane Society of the United States. Speaking as a member of a panel on 'What should animal agriculture look like in 2020?’, Pacelle noted the need for open dialogue and animal welfare reforms to address current imbalances that have resulted from the development of modern farming systems over the past 50 years. He believed that the US consumer was generally unaware of modern animal-raising practices but that understanding was growing and would continue to do so, resulting in changes being made on the farm.

This sentiment ties in with the emphasis that the European Commission is placing upon 'fork to farm’ as a driver for change in animal welfare (see article on Andrea Gavinelli, on page 12 of this issue). Another panellist was Steve Kopperud, an agriculture industry consultant at Policy Directions Inc. He agreed with Wayne Pacelle and stressed that farmers who did not incorporate practices to improve animal welfare "would go out of business, it’s that simple".

Another panel addressed the outsourcing of animal production to developing countries and its impacts on animal welfare. Mildred Haley, USDA Economic Research Service, noted that increases in costs of production associated with animal welfare in North America would not lead to outsourcing of pork production to third countries in the near future.

It was agreed that agriculture needed to be dynamic and adapt to change, that technology would continue to play an important role in providing for a population that would demand twice the amount of food in the next 50 years, and that, as the world’s largest food producer, the United States would need to continue to drive technological developments in agriculture.

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Page last updated: 30 April 2008