Comments for High Level Panel Report on food loss and waste
January 2014
Page 12 – reference to livestock and grain based intensification:
Livestock play a central role in food security by providing food, employment and income. But livestock production can also negatively affect food security, by consuming a growing proportion of the world’s crops that could otherwise be used for direct human nutrition.
1 Land for livestock is already the largest human use of land and is growing while forests and other land areas are shrinking. With the growth in incomes and urbanization and without adequate policy response, demand for livestock products will increase rapidly. This places additional pressure on land resources through increasing demand for pastures and arable land to grow more crops for animal feed.
Grain-based intensification of livestock farming has allowed vast increases in production and consumption in recent decades. However, it has also resulted in negative impacts on smallholders, food security and animal welfare. Further intensification of livestock production based on cereal and oil crops has the potential to create more competition between cropland for human food and cropland for animal feed. It could also make food security more challenging in areas which are already food insecure, including parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Additionally, international trade in animal feedstuffs can increase the vulnerability of these regions to world market-price shocks.
Page 32 - Transportation of food producing animals
Substantial quantities of food are lost or wasted at all stages of the supply chain, from agricultural production to final household consumption. In medium and high-income countries large quantities of food still fit for human consumption are routinely discarded by retailers and consumers. In lowincome countries food is lost mostly during the early and middle stages of the food supply chain with much less wasted by end consumers 2 .
There are many causes of food losses and waste in low-income countries. These include financial and managerial inexperience, technical limitations in harvesting techniques, poor storage and cooling facilities in difficult climatic conditions, a lack of infrastructure, and inadequate packaging and marketing systems. Given that many smallholder farmers in developing countries live on the margins of food insecurity, a reduction in food losses could have an immediate and significant impact on their livelihoods 3 .
The FAO notes that loss and wastage occurs at multiple stages of livestock production, including during breeding, transportation and slaughter. Improving animal welfare not only on the farm, but
1 53% of oil-crops 38% of cereals are used to feed livestock, Karl-Heinz Erb et al (Vienna 2012), The Impact of
Industrial Grain Fed Livestock Production on Food Security: an extended literature review, p.32-33.
2 FAO – Global food loss and food waster report, 2011 http://www.fao.org/docrep/014/mb060e/mb060e00.pdf
3 FAO – Global food loss and food waster report, 2011 http://www.fao.org/docrep/014/mb060e/mb060e00.pdf

also during transport and slaughter provides an effective solution that makes good economic sense and has demonstrable benefits for animals, productivity and worker health and safety. Moreover, often food and economic losses can be avoided by transporting meat instead of live animals.
Research in Uruguay, for example, estimated that 48 per cent of all beef carcasses ended up with at least one lesion and the loss of two kilograms of meat as a result of poor handling during transport and slaughter. Country wide this was equivalent to the loss of US$100million or 3000 tonnes of meat annually – enough to feed beef to one million people for a whole year 4 . A number of projects are now being implemented by producers, academics and the Uruguayan government to reduce these losses 5 . Making transporters financially accountable for bruising, poor meat quality and loss of animals can improve handling and transport. In one example in Brazil, bruising in cattle was reduced from 20 per cent to just one per cent through this measure alone.
4
Animal and human welfare hand-in-hand – How animal welfare can boost jobs and livelihoods, WSPA, 2012
5
Huertas, S. (2010). Good management Practices in beef cattle, Presentation for the workshop, Low cost practices and tools to improve farm animal welfare, 31 May-1 june, Jaboticabal, Brazil.