The Animal Production and Health Section of the Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture recognises that the trend towards intensification of livestock production in developing countries presents both opportunities and challenges. The potential opportunities are the flow-on benefits to the producers and local economy while the potential challenges are the flow-on costs to the environment, animal health and welfare. The intensification of livestock production can lead to higher levels of greenhouse gas emissions and a localisation
or concentration of nutrients, which increases the risk of pollution of waterways, increased chemical and drug use to overcome disease transmission and put pressure on the livestock production systems as local communities strive to provide more and better quality feed for the animals. The growing global pressure from consumers for producers to engage in sustainable production systems, i.e. to produce high quality, wholesome and safe products in an efficient manner with minimal impact on the environment and human health, will also impact livestock production in developing countries. This will put producers in developing countries under similar pressures to those in developed countries to limit the input of, and find “natural” alternatives to chemical use by exploring alternative sources of feed resources.
The successful intensification of livestock production in developing countries will depend on the ability of local producers to design sustainable feeding systems based on locally available feed resources that are efficient, profitable and with minimum effect on the environment. To design these feeding systems, these producers need the technical capability to screen local plant resources for their nutritive value, anti-nutritional factors and/or toxicity. This would be followed by incorporation of the selected species in animal studies to measure the efficiency of nutrient
utilisation, monitor reproductive efficiency and their effects on the health of the animals.
This publication stems from a meeting between the Joint FAO/IAEA Division and Writtle College, UK entitled “Alternative feed resources: a key to livestock intensification in developing countries” held in September, 2006 prior to the British Society of Animal Science meeting on ethnobotany/ethnoveterinary medicine entitled “Harvesting Knowledge, Pharming Opportunities”. The participants included ten experts in nutrition, screening native plants for bioactive compounds for animal