Heat stress, water scarcity, reduced feed crop and forage quality, and diseases are some of the challenges to livestock induced by climate change. Those are expected to reduce feed intake, which impacts growth, reducing milk production and increasing mortality. Indirectly, heat stress reduces protein content and yield in feed.[1]

 

Fisheries and aquaculture are also threatened by climate change, and although the expected impacts are mixed, they tend to be negative.[2]

 

Challenging

 

These combined issues will make it more challenging in the future to produce equivalent, let alone greater quantities of animal-sourced proteins.

 

Major events such as prolonged heatwaves that affect major producing countries could trigger a shift. Animal protein production worldwide and in the EU could rapidly change depending on how different production systems respond to climatic and economic conditions.

 

Farms shutting down

 

Conventional production in uncontrolled and monoculture environments is likely to result in greater variations in output, leading low-margin operations (typically, dairy farms) to shut down at an accelerated pace.

 

Meat and dairy production could continue operating in mixed-farming environments (particularly when animal rearing is combined with agroforestry, which provides passive cooling to animals during heat waves[3]).

 

Livestock production could also continue operating in controlled environments (indoors). Growth may continue in both mixed farming and controlled environments but this will translate into higher costs, particularly for the latter because of increasing cooling needs and energy use, and higher feed costs (reduced yields leading to price increases).

 

Lower demand

 

Cost increases across dairy and meat products may dampen demand for animal proteins, especially meat, in favour of plant-based or other alternative proteins.

 

The issue of feed availability and quality (in terms of protein content) would be particularly acute for production in controlled environments and would create a major opportunity for feed protein alternatives.