Sustainable and Holistic Food Chains
for Recycling Livestock Waste to Land

Sustainable and Holistic Food Chains for Recycling Livestock Waste to Land

Funder: RELU

Cost: £430k

Duration: 2005-2008



Project Details

Project aims

A multi-scale approach from farm to regional level

  • Evaluate the impact of management practices to control the risk of pathogen transfers (measured as faecal indicator organisms - FIOs-) from grazing livestock, manures and other waste streams on the economics and practicalities at the farm level
  • Determine the 'knock-on' effects of such decisions on local communities and industries reliant on clean water supplies.
  • Determine current perceptions of farmers, retailers, consumers and local 'downstream' industries to the issue of pathogen transfers to the food chain, with the aim of assessing the impacts of changes in management practices at the farm level on farm costs and costs to other stakeholder groups and the region as a whole.
  • Develop a field- and farm- scale risk indexing tool based on field risk mapping using both farm visits and electronic datasets.
  • Develop a catchment scale FIO risk screening tool using nationally available datasets and survey responses
  • Establish relationships between livestock and manure management and effluent flows and transfers of FIOs to the food chain using targeted monitoring. Farms will be encouraged to adopt management practices to reduce the risk of pathogen transfers and the impacts on FIO transfers to the food chain will be assessed.
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