BY JAMES MUTUA
The World Animal Protection has called on the African Governments to promote sustainable and humane animal production systems to promote climate restoration. They were speaking during the 2nd Protein Summit which was held in Kenya’s capital Nairobi. The summit highlighted the urgent need to mitigate the adverse environmental impacts of intensive livestock production systems and emphasized the importance of preserving traditional, resilient, and humane production systems that support small-scale farmers in the region.
At the summit, Dr. Victor Yamo the farming campaigns manager at World Animal protection said that the rapid growth of the human population particularly in Africa, coupled with increasing affluence had led to a surge in demand for animal products.
Intensification of livestock production is gaining popularity to meet this demand. However, intensive livestock production is associated with significant animal abuse, water and environmental pollution, deforestation, biodiversity loss and increased greenhouse gas emissions, making it an unsustainable method of food production.
added Dr Yano
In the summit, presenters highlighted numerous negative impacts associated with intensive livestock production systems which compromised animal welfare, public health concerns, and adverse effects on the environment and climate. The Summit recognized that Africa’s green house gas emissions are mainly from the Agriculture, Forestry and other land-use change estimated at 65% of the continent’s emissions.
It was further recognized that whilst there is room for the lowest meat consumption countries in Africa to increase rates of meat consumption to meet nutritional needs, embracing intensive livestock production systems will not only endanger food and nutrition security but also the livelihoods of small holder producers while worsening the superbug crisis and the climate crisis.Some of the outcomes which were agreed upon during the summit were to acknowledge and regulate green house gas emissions from animal agriculture, hold agricultural companies with high emissions accountable for their carbon footprint and to protect small holder livestock producers by empowering them with animal husbandry knowledge and skills.
Other agreements were to redirect subsidies provided to large agribusinesses towards smallholders, to increase awareness on alternative protein sources.They also asked African governments to bring stakeholders together in creating policy statement on sustainable agricultural production. World Animal Protection is an international non-profit animal rights organization that has been in operation since 1981 whose mission is to create a better world for animals.
