Securing animal feed supplies: a formula for uninterrupted UK food production

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The current outbreak of the coronavirus in the United Kingdom has caused food consumption patterns to change with more people eating at home and shopping at retail outlets for food such as meat, milk and eggs. It has also caused disruption to the availability of animal feed ingredients -- in some cases imports have slowed or stopped and in other cases by-products are no longer available - such as brewers grains and apple pomace from the alcohol industries which have ceased to operate due to the outbreak.Animal nutritionists within the feed manufacturing industry need to have the capability to deal with these changing scenarios and respond quickly. The **vision for this project** is to develop an **innovative** multi-objective fractional programming model which is better adapted to meet changing needs in feed design than the traditionally used least cost linear model. This will allow fast turnaround time for alternative solutions to ensure a sustainable supply of nutritious food in UK. This will allow for effective management of resources and costs, as well as meeting consumer demand. For example, i) if milk powder (one of the most bioavailable nutrient sources) became unavailable in pork production, what replacement in pig feed would ensure the physiological development and welfare of the pig, efficiency of production, profitability, and the sustainable production of pork for the consumer? ii) ) if a consequence of 'lockdown' and 'cocooning' was a decline in vitamin D status among the general population, what feed formulations could be developed to ensure an increased level of vitamin D in meat/milk/eggs to meet nutrition and health claim requirements?The **key objectives** are understanding 1) what ingredients are critical in meat (pork, chicken and beef), milk and egg production, 2) what replacements are possible and 3) what are the effects of these replacements. The **main focus areas** for this project will be designing the multi-objective fractional programming model feed to allow continual production of suf?cient, safe and nutritious food.This **project is innovative** because existing linear programming models for feed formulation seek the least-cost combination of ingredients that satisfies a specific level of nutritional requirements. This project will involve a multi-objective algorithm to include suf?cient, safe and nutritious food.