Veterinary sustainability
Veterinary sustainability brings animals into the environmental account as more than bystanders: livestock, farmed fish and pets carry a share of the emissions and pollution that veterinarians can help reduce, a veterinary practice has its own footprint to cut, and the message is spreading through the profession.
Animals in the sustainability account
Most discourse on climate change is anthropocentric: it treats climate change as a crisis for humanity and minimises or omits its effects on domesticated, feral and wild species. Beyond the ethical and philosophical questions this raises, that narrow focus is a reductive approach that threatens to undermine efforts to become a genuinely sustainable global society. Humanity's interaction with domesticated species has environmental consequences (gaseous emissions, water and soil pollution, ecosystem damage, depleted species diversity), animal welfare consequences (intensive production systems and breeding) and human and animal health consequences (the threat of zoonoses and antimicrobial resistance).
In one 2022 overview of the field, veterinary sustainability is not just a cut and paste of the measures adopted in human healthcare, although many translate directly to the veterinary clinical setting, nor just a matter of tackling food security and sustainable food production; it also brings non-human species into the discussion of sustainable development, where animals had been considered inert bystanders or vessels through which to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
A new academic field, the Veterinary Humanities, has been introduced out of a need to define the relationship between animal protection and sustainability. Many domains, the veterinary profession and animal welfare among them, have found that the Sustainable Development Goals do not yet address them directly, though the goals are broad enough that high animal welfare standards are not incompatible with them, nor they with such standards.
The veterinary profession's role
Veterinarians are respected for their knowledge of animal health and disease, and they safeguard animal health and welfare and, where applicable, the productivity of the animals under their care. Given the threats posed by climate change, the veterinary profession must use this privilege to help the whole human-animal-environmental interface shift towards the objectives of the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Veterinarians are not just healthcare professionals: those in farm practice have a central role in food production and food security. Veterinarians are also ideally positioned to advise and educate animal owners to make more sustainable choices. The veterinary profession could be considered part of the problem, particularly through its prescribing practices and its support of intensive farming, but its expertise in improving animal health and welfare, increasing productivity and reducing waste will be essential to the development of sustainable animal agriculture.
In 2022, veterinary policymakers at the national, international and global levels were described as universally committed to finding sustainable solutions to the role of animals in agriculture. In June 2021 the Federation of Veterinarians of Europe published a position statement committing its members to contribute actively to sustainable food systems through "the promotion of animal health, welfare, and public health", which it called "the backbone for improved sustainability, global health, and security". The British Veterinary Association has a position statement supporting the sustainable development of animal agriculture, with a strong emphasis on animal welfare.
Livestock emissions and their mitigation
The global agriculture sector is one of the industries with the highest environmental impact, through land use, consumption of natural resources and greenhouse gas emissions. The global livestock population is estimated to contribute about 8% of total anthropogenic greenhouse gases, with beef cattle production contributing a disproportionate share. Methane from the bovine gastrointestinal tract has caught the public imagination, but nitrous oxide and ammonia emissions from the vast quantities of slurry produced add a substantial cumulative effect. Greenhouse gas emissions are the metrics most commonly used to compare the environmental impacts of human activity, but reporting agricultural emissions solely as greenhouse gases carries an inherent bias, which arose because greenhouse gases are relatively easy to measure. Soil organic carbon, which has the potential to be a carbon sink and counterbalance greenhouse gases, is difficult and expensive to measure and often left out of the discussion altogether, which highlights a need for more balanced discourse on climate change and emissions.
Veterinarians have played a central role in efforts to reduce the impacts of livestock production generally and of beef cattle specifically. Drawing on the World Resources Institute's July 2019 World Resources Report, mitigation measures in each sector contribute to reducing total annual agricultural greenhouse gas emissions in 2050 to a target of 4 Gt CO2e a year, and the veterinary profession has direct input into some of those areas. The three main areas for mitigating the impact of cattle farming are resource efficiency and environmental management, modifying enteric fermentation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and selectively breeding animals that produce fewer greenhouse gases and are resilient to climate change. Central to all three is improving cattle health to reduce waste caused by disease and reproductive inefficiency, and national health schemes such as those on mastitis, lameness and bovine viral diarrhoea virus in the UK can help to improve efficiency. Improving the submission rate, a measurement of fertility, from 50% to 70% is estimated to reduce methane emissions by 24%. A "less and better" policy has been proposed, in which citizens reduce their consumption of food animal products while health and welfare are protected by maintaining costs.
Dairy farming
By 2023, sustainability was increasingly taking a central role in the global dairy industry. Producers traditionally reward farmers for the quantity and quality of milk, by volume in Europe and by protein and fat content in New Zealand, with bonuses or penalties for hygiene and animal health parameters, but the trend is for dairy companies to introduce sustainability incentives. Fonterra, New Zealand's farmer-owned dairy co-operative, launched The Co-operative Difference in 2019, a framework for looking after people, animals, the environment and the co-op itself. Its base level requires farms to complete an animal wellbeing plan in consultation with their vet, design an environmental plan and meet all expectations of a good employer. Its higher levels recognise milk quality excellence maintained for at least 30 days of the season and, for top performers, for over 90% of it. Arla Foods introduced a similar voluntary rewards system in Europe, which around 95% of its farmers signed up for. It rewards feed efficiency, fertiliser use, land use, protein efficiency and animal robustness, which refers to animal health and is measured by cow mortality rates.
Efficient heifer rearing is another crucial component of sustainable dairying. Vets help farmers reach the target of a fully grown, healthy heifer that delivers its first calf without complications at 23 months. Lost production efficiency contributes to waste and poor sustainability in dairy farming.
Aquaculture
In 2022, aquaculture, a rapidly growing industry, provided more than 50% of fish for human consumption, having overtaken wild-caught fish about four to five years earlier. It brings demands for veterinary services and resources similar to those of other animal production systems, such as feed, welfare (particularly at slaughter), waste management and preventive health plans against sea lice and amoebic gill disease. Its rapid growth has raised questions about its sustainability and its effects on the fragile aquatic ecosystem, particularly the administration of veterinary medicinal products, which can flow freely into bodies of water.
The sea louse Lepeophtheirus salmonis causes 3.62–16.5% biomass loss per production cycle in farmed salmon, through spoilage or even mass mortality, and this inefficiency is a significant sustainability challenge. The efficacy of "natural" treatments such as cleaner fish is supported by weak evidence and dogged by environmental, economic and welfare concerns. CleanTreat is a treatment system that removes farmed salmon from open water to treat the parasite, then washes treatment residues and parasite debris, including eggs, off the fish before returning them to their pens. It obtained regulatory approval in Norway in July 2021, and it is an example of how technology can protect the environment while optimising production animal health and welfare.
Companion animals and pet food
Food production animals have by far the most significant environmental impact, but the sustainability challenges of companion animals also need to be taken into consideration. The ecological burden of feeding almost 200 million cats and dogs in Europe has prompted cradle-to-grave life-cycle analyses of commercial pet food. Dog food production has a higher environmental impact than cat food simply because of the volume produced, and wet food requires a greater consumption of natural resources, such as tin plating for packaging. Some have suggested that the high protein content of many commercial diets (more than 30% crude protein on a dry-matter basis) is due more to client demand than to an evidence-based nutritional requirement. Since protein is the most ecologically demanding macronutrient, reducing protein content could be a means of improving sustainability. Some producers offer pet food ranges derived from insect protein. Veterinarians are best positioned to counsel owners on sustainable diets, with precision advice based on the individual animal's healthcare needs.
A veterinary practice's own footprint
Any profession claiming a leadership role in sustainable development must first practise what it preaches. As a healthcare system, the veterinary practice must also "develop strategies to mitigate (avoid the unmanageable) and adapt (manage the unavoidable)" in response to environmental issues. There is relatively little published literature on sustainability in the veterinary workplace compared with human healthcare: one systematic literature search reported in 2022 found only three opinion papers, one on the environmental impact of veterinary anaesthesia and two on farm animal impacts, against 49 articles returned by a systematic search of the human literature seven years earlier.
Anaesthetic emissions can be reduced by capturing and recycling waste gases or by rendering them chemically inert. Swapping to a less potent gaseous anaesthetic, to total intravenous anaesthesia or to local anaesthetic blocking techniques are also effective mitigating strategies. Two studies estimated 32–51% wastage of injectable anaesthetics in human hospitals, which, if not addressed, negates the sustainability gains of switching to total intravenous anaesthesia.
In veterinary clinical practice, changes are being made to conserve high-priority resources such as electricity, gas, oil, water and paper, through efficient waste sorting and sustainable procurement of materials and equipment. Replacing the elbow-operated tap that surgeons scrub at with a foot-operated pedal saves 5.7 litres of water per scrub. Switching to eco-friendly autoclaves, or retrofitting older models, can save 60,000 gallons of water a year.
Practice sustainability standards in the UK
By 6 April 2023, the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in the UK had launched a guidance document to help practices meet newly introduced practice sustainability standards. The standards were implemented from 1 June 2023 as part of the existing practice standards quality assurance, the core standards that the code of conduct obliges all practices to meet. Alongside a written sustainability practice policy and responsible use of ectoparasiticides, practices were to be provided with how-to guidance on compiling both, as well as an annual waste management survey, encouraging clients to return unused medicines for safe disposal, and methods to reduce the use of anaesthetic gases. The measures are also intended to foster a sustainable approach by all members of the profession in their day-to-day work.
Vet Sustain and support for the profession
Vet Sustain, founded in the UK in 2019 by a group of veterinarians, was the first sustainability support organisation for veterinary professionals. A community interest company and not-for-profit social enterprise, it aims to give members of the profession, in whichever sector they work, the tools to cultivate sustainable practice. It pursues this aim by building a network of veterinary professionals, working with veterinary schools to integrate sustainability into the curriculum, and equipping professionals with the tools to support the uptake of sustainable development policies. Its five-year strategic plan aims for 50% of UK veterinary practices and all key UK veterinary associations to have a sustainability policy in place by 2025. Its six sustainability outcomes, aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals, are diverse and abundant wildlife; a good life for animals; net zero warming; health and happiness; a no-waste society; and clean water for all. Each outcome carries its own list of actions, from developing climate literacy within the profession and understanding supply chains to understanding and mitigating medicine ecotoxicity and protecting waterways from pollution.
In its first two years, Vet Sustain forged partnerships with the prominent UK veterinary membership organisations and reached out to veterinary organisations in Australia, North America, the Caribbean and Europe to support local veterinary sustainability initiatives. In 2022 it was developing a sustainable practice accreditation system so that clients could select practices by sustainability credentials. Many pet owners would seek out a clinic that operates sustainably, which indicates that sustainable practice need not carry an economic penalty. By late August 2021, Vet Sustain and the veterinary pharmaceutical company Animalcare had announced a partnership with the collective goal of improving sustainability in the veterinary sector. In 2020, Animalcare was the first veterinary pharmaceutical company in the UK to achieve carbon-neutral status. Vet Sustain is a resource in high demand: in a survey of British Veterinary Association members reported in 2021, 89% of respondents were motivated to play a more active role in the UK sustainability agenda. A 2022 overview of the field holds that active engagement of the profession by dedicated organisations such as Vet Sustain is essential for the profession's sustainable development, and that demand for their resources is likely to grow.