Animal-Future will design strategies for assessing and enhancing the sustainability of animal production systems (APS). Main objectives are (i) Assess the multi-dimensional consequences of innovations on benefits (cash flow, income, jobs, product quality and safety, ecosystem services etc.) and costs (use of scarce natural resources, health and welfare) of APS. (ii) Improve the capacity of European animal sector actors to facilitate sound changes based on a thorough understanding of mechanisms underlying trade-offs between benefits and costs. (iii) Provide guidance co-designed by scientists and animal production actors through which the latter can reinforce their innovation capacity. To achieve these, the project will (i) Develop a indicator-based decision support tool that will be used for assessing and benchmarking European APS according to benefits and costs induced by innovations (from farm to region, nation and EU27). (ii) Bring together multi-disciplinary research teams and animal production actors (farmers, processors, breeders etc.) using a multi-actor approach and starting from a farm network of intensive/extensive APS across Europe. Relevance to research area includes (RA1) Developing and assessing innovations that move farm management closer to the production frontier, while considering fundamental trade-offs with respect to social and environmental dimensions. (RA2) Insights into how animal production sector (from the farm to EU scale) can increase the efficiency of feed utilization, recycle waste and exploit potentials to convert biomass resources not directly edible for humans into high-quality protein sources for human nutrition. (RA3) Transparent and comprehensive accounting for on-farm practices that makes explicit a whole set of benefits and costs, at farm and larger spatial scales, thus raising the awareness of animal sector actors, citizens and policy makers about the often-neglected benefits that animal systems provide to society.

The overall aim of SusSheP is to increase the sustainability and profitability of European Sheep Production by addressing key industry focused problems. Sheep are unproductive (but carbon productive) until they produce their first lamb crop, normally at 2 years of age and, on average, ewes only produce 4 crops of lambs in their lifetime. Despite its importance both from an economic and environmental perspective ewe longevity is not included in sheep breeding indexes across Europe. SusSheP will establish the genetic factors controlling ewe longevity, under different Sheep Production Systems (SPSs) and assess if early life predictors (eg reared as single, twin etc) can be used to predict longevity. Parallel to this, SusSheP will identify the most carbon and labour efficient SPSs under different management systems (eg prolific vs non-prolific sheep breeds) in order to enable the development of strategies to reduce the labour input and carbon hoof print per kg of output. The breeding of more efficient sheep has been hampered internationally by the lack of sheep artificial insemination, as the only effective method for use with frozen-thawed semen is a laparoscopic procedure, whereby, semen is injected directly into the uterus but this requires veterinary expertise, is welfare unfriendly and sociable unacceptable. The only exception to this is in Norway, in which vaginal deposition of frozen-thawed semen yields good pregnancy rates. Research in Ireland has demonstrated this is due to the breed of the ewe used in Norway, whereby sperm can transverse the cervix in greater numbers than in other breeds, leading to higher pregnancy rates. SusSheP will interrogate the differences across breeds in cervical physiology and its secretions (genes, proteins and glycans) with a view of developing a more sociably acceptable AI method. Finally, through the participation of strategically chosen SME’s, SusSheP will maximise knowledge transfer to industry, farmers and the scientific communities.

More than 30% of the Earth’s total land mass is used for grazing livestock production, mainly by ruminant animals. The evolutionary adaptation of the ruminant’s ability to convert pasture to animal products such as meat, milk, and fibre may have been successfully harnessed, but ruminant production has an unwanted byproduct of an important greenhouse gas (GHG), methane. The aim of the project is to combine international scientific and industry expertise to generate new knowledge and applied solutions for the mitigation of GHG emissions in sheep. GrassToGas will identify individual animal, feed and environmental attributes associated with feed and water intake efficiency for pasture-based sheep production systems. The potential impact would be relevant for the mitigation of GHG emissions within 5 - 10 years and beyond, by the application of the results from this project into sheep breeding programmes designed to produce cumulative reductions of GHG emissions of around 1-3% p.a.