UK dairy industry and NGOs join together for sustainability

A Dairy UK one-day conference in London this week saw the dairy industry and non-governmental organisations such as the World Wildlife Fund come together and take a look at what further improvements could be made in sustainability. Richard Laxton, Arla foods’ sustainability manager for the UK, told the audience, “We need to think about what we’re doing. We’re producing food and food producers have a responsibility to society to provide nutritious food, but to do it in a sustainable way. Messages like reducing dairy consumption are becoming more prevalent, and the aim of today’s conference is to ask whether that’s valid or not.”
Since even the WWF’s Richard Perkins admitted to being a lacto-vegetarian, it seems that the validity of decreasing consumption for the purpose of sustainability may be a moot one. Nutrition-wise, milk is one of the more nutrient-dense foods compared with its impact on the climate, the afternoon’s session speakers noted.
Another outcomes was showing that dairy actually accounts for a smaller portion of greenhouse gas emissions than consumers think, less than 2%. However, all agreed that dairy could do better, particularly in the area of slurry and manure handling, and fertilizer runoff issues. Water, as Rob Lillywhite of the University of Warwick, is one of the key issues for all agriculture, not just dairy operations.
The end result appeared to be that dairy must maintain its forward thinking outlined in the Milk Roadmap, must continue to try and formulate effective ways of measuring the impact on climate, and continue to tackle the pressing environmental issues. A full report will be in the next issue of Dairy Industries International.