Environmental and animal welfare impacts of different dairy production systems: a holistic approach.

不同乳制品生产系统对环境和动物福利的影响：整体方法。

• 批准号: 2737956
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Bristol
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2737956
• 关键词: Environmental; animal; welfare; impacts; different

Conventional UK dairy production, where cattle have on average 6 months grazing and spend the winter months housed has been shown to have high environmental impacts on greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity, soil health and water pollution. The research and farming communities have identified two potentially more sustainable approaches: regenerative grazing systems, which integrate conservation and food production on the same land ("land sharing"); and sustainably intensified systems, which separate high-yield food production farms from protected habitats for conservation ("land sparing"). Since these dairy systems differ in the management practices they use, they result in different environmental, economic, and animal welfare outcomes. Moreover, it is likely that the rising societal awareness of dairy production environmental concerns has affected public attitudes regarding dairy production systems and the milk they produce. Assessing animal welfare at the farm level is time consuming and thus, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) surveillance tools (aided by video cameras) has been proposed to identify key animal welfare traits in housed systems but has not been extended under grazing conditions yet. This project aims to evaluate the environmental, economic and animal welfare aspects of conventional, regenerative and sustainably intensified dairy systems, including through novel vision-based machine learning technologies, as well as societal perceptions towards them. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to participate of a multidisciplinary group where academics experts in sustainable animal production, economic and environmental footprint assessment, animal behaviour and welfare, data science machine vision and artificial intelligence and public perception evaluation have joined together to undertake a comprehensive evaluation of the dairy production systems. The student will benefit from having access to the University of Bristol and Rothamsted Research facilities and will receive training and obtain the skills needed to undertake an in deep evaluation of the different aspects of the animal production systems. Moreover, the student will have the opportunity to directly engage with farmers, researchers and advisors from our partner, Pasture-Fed Livestock Association (PFLA).

传统的英国乳制品生产，牛平均有6个月的放牧和度过的冬季被证明对温室气体排放，生物多样性，土壤健康和水污染产生了很大的环境影响。研究和农业社区已经确定了两种潜在的可持续方法：再生放牧系统，它们将保护和粮食生产整合在同一土地上（“土地共享”）；以及可持续加强的系统，这些系统将高产粮食生产农场与保护栖息地分开（“土地保存”）。由于这些乳制品系统在使用的管理实践方面有所不同，因此它们会带来不同的环境，经济和动物福利结果。此外，对乳制品生产环境问题的社会意识不断提高，影响了公众对乳制品生产系统及其生产的牛奶的态度。在农场一级评估动物福利是很耗时的，因此，已经提出了使用人工智能（AI）监视工具（通过摄像机的帮助）来识别住房系统中的重要动物福利特征，但尚未在放牧条件下扩展。该项目旨在评估传统，再生和可持续加强乳制品系统的环境，经济和动物福利方面，包括通过基于新颖的基于视觉的机器学习技术以及对它们的社会看法。成功的候选人将有机会参与一个多学科小组，在该小组中，可持续动物生产，经济和环境足迹评估，动物行为和福利，数据科学机器愿景和人工智能以及公众的看法评估的学者专家共同进行了对乳制品生产系统的全面评估。该学生将受益于获得布里斯托尔大学和Rothamsted研究设施，并将接受培训并获得对动物生产系统不同方面进行深入评估所需的技能。此外，该学生将有机会直接与我们的合作伙伴牧场饲养牲畜协会（PFLA）的农民，研究人员和顾问互动。