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

目前在英国爆发的冠状病毒导致食品消费模式发生了变化，越来越多的人在家里吃饭，在零售店购买肉、牛奶和鸡蛋等食品。疫情还扰乱了动物饲料原料的供应——在某些情况下，进口放缓或停止，在其他情况下，副产品不再供应——例如酿酒师的谷物和来自酒精行业的苹果渣，这些行业因疫情而停止运营。饲料制造行业的动物营养学家需要有能力应对这些不断变化的情况，并迅速做出反应。该项目的愿景是开发一种创新的多目标分式规划模型，该模型比传统的最低成本线性模型更能适应饲料设计中不断变化的需求。这将为替代解决方案提供快速周转时间，以确保英国营养食品的可持续供应。这将有助于有效地管理资源和成本，并满足消费者的需求。例如，i)如果猪肉生产中无法使用奶粉（生物利用度最高的营养来源之一），那么猪饲料中有什么替代品可以确保猪的生理发育和福利、生产效率、盈利能力以及为消费者可持续生产猪肉？ii))如果“封锁”和“茧化”的后果是普通人群维生素D水平下降，那么可以开发哪些饲料配方来确保肉/奶/蛋中维生素D水平的提高，以满足营养和健康声明的要求？主要目标是了解1)肉类（猪肉、鸡肉和牛肉）、牛奶和鸡蛋生产中哪些成分是关键的，2)可能有哪些替代品，3)这些替代品的影响是什么。这个项目的主要关注领域将是设计多目标分式编程模型，以允许持续生产suf？安全、安全、营养的食品。该项目具有创新性，因为现有的饲料配方线性规划模型寻求满足特定营养需求水平的最低成本成分组合。这个项目将涉及一个多目标算法，包括suf？安全、安全、营养的食品。

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.