Case Studies

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.

There is significant food insecurity in Scotland and to tackle it, the Scottish Government has published Cash-First.

Scotland’s pork sector is under financial pressure. One way to address this could be to increase the value added to Scottish pork. This case study, which focusses on a Scottish pork producer, provides insights into an enterprise serving the high value pork products market and the challenges it faces.

Scotland’s pork sector is under financial pressure. One way to address this could be to increase the value added to Scottish pork. However, that is only viable if there is a retail market for value-added Scottish pork products.

Mycotoxins are naturally occurring toxins produced by fungal infection of agricultural crops. Several hundred mycotoxins have been characterized in a wide range of food crops around the world, and new mycotoxins and mycotoxin metabolites are continuously discovered.

Microbes (e.g., bacteria, viruses, parasites and fungi) can become resistant to clinical or veterinary drugs (antimicrobials) that are used to treat disease. This has major consequences for how microbial diseases are managed and, therefore, how antimicrobial compounds should be used.

Pharmaceutical pollution in the environment has recently been receiving a lot of attention. Medicines enter wastewater streams and even after treatment, some end up in surface water. Scotland's One Health Breakthrough Partnership aims to reduce pharmaceutical concentrations in the environment.

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).

The Tarland Burn Catchment (~70 km²) has been studied since the year 2000 making it one of the longest running comprehensive catchment management case studies in the UK.

Increasingly trees are being promoted as a means to increase carbon storage and hence off-set climate change.

In 2020, researchers and practitioners collaborated to better understand how inclusive growth can be conceptualised and measured across a large, diverse and predominantly rural region in the north and west of Scotland.

Healthy, intact floodplains play an important role in mitigating extremes of water availability (droughts and floods) expected under climate change. Compared to other ecosystems, intact floodplains also support a disproportionately high biodiversity.

The climate emergency presents a double challenge for public bodies as they reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and learn to adapt to the already changing climate.

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.

Streams and rivers in farmland areas often have a degraded morphology due to straightening and run-off pollution (inputs of fine sediment, < 2 mm particle size diameter).

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 emis

The importance of ecosystems and biodiversity to human well-being is now well established as they provide benefits such as timber, pollination and coastal protection. 

The Scottish Government has committed to legally binding targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2045. This will require a reduction across all sectors of the economy.

Scotland has ambitious strategies for biodiversity protection and climate action with the intention of achieving a greener, fairer and just future.