Plant and Animal Health

Infectious diseases have a major impact on the welfare and productivity of animals raised for food production worldwide. Furthermore, poor productivity leads to increased carbon emissions, and the drugs used to control infections can harm the environment and reduce biodiversity. Therefore, better control of infections in food producing animals will play a key role in achieving important policy goals, including Net-Zero and Biodiversity targets.

Microbes play a wide variety of essential roles in keeping our guts healthy and in supporting food and agriculture production. Conversely, some microbial populations can cause serious disease, as foodborne pathogens or infectious agents of food-producing animals and crops.

Plant pests and pathogens can have a devastating impact not only on plant hosts but also the wider biodiversity that use the infected plant (e.g., for food, breeding and shelter). Thus, a decline in one plant species can have cascading effects on a wide range of other species, sometimes causing severe declines in their populations.

In an ever-changing world, it is essential that individuals are able to access, and act upon, the most relevant information and advice, and no more so than in agriculture. In this technologically-evolving age, finding information is not an issue, but finding information that is trustworthy, and in a format that is fit for purpose, can be challenging.

A SEFARI Gateway-funded Specialist Advisory Group brought together a broad range of expertise across key industry stakeholders, Government Policy Leads and relevant SEFARI researchers to discuss livestock health and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), to prioritise health conditions that have the greatest impact on emissions and to identify practical disease intervention strategies and pathways to impact that will encourage uptake across the industry.

Scotland has ambitious strategies for biodiversity protection and climate action with the intention of achieving a greener, fairer and just future. As most land in Scotland is devoted to some form of agricultural production, farmers and land managers are key players in achieving a transition to more sustainable agriculture and horticulture.

A SEFARI Specialist Advisory Group was established in response to concerns from livestock farmers and agro-ecologists about the adverse environmental impacts of some frontline livestock worming treatments, which reach the environment either in the dung/urine of treated animals or as a result of inappropriate disposal. Information on potential environmental impacts is a prerequisite for approval of veterinary medicines in the UK, but that information is not easy to find or understand.