With focus on a sustainable dairy production, the theme group aims to develop new feeding and management strategies based on an understanding of the underlying physiology to improve life-time productivity and feed efficiency, reduce the environmental impact and emission of greenhouse gases from cattle production without impairing animal production or product (milk and meat) quality/safety.
Consumers are increasingly concerned about climate impacts of food production, animal well-being and healthy nutrition for animals and humans.
The perspective is to be able to design physiologically well-balanced diets for optimized production, health and longevity of cattle.
The need for quantification and mitigation of the climate impact and environmental load of cattle production is indisputable, and is addressed by the development of more sustainable cattle production systems.