Trade-offs in the externalities of pig production are not inevitable

Abstract

Livestock production generates substantial impacts. Despite a widespread perception that different externalities of farming systems typically co-vary negatively, such tradeoffs have rarely been quantified systematically. We collected data from diverse UK and Brazilian pig systems representative of most commercial systems across the world to explore, for the first time, the co-variation among four major externality costs simultaneously: land use, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, antimicrobial use (AMU) and animal welfare. We find both positive associations and tradeoffs: generally, systems with low land use have low GHGs, but high AMU and poor welfare, and vice versa. Despite these overall associations, some individual systems perform well in all domains. These systems show that tradeoffs, commonly perceived to be inevitable, are in fact not. These promising systems are not limited to a particular type of farming (e.g., label or husbandry type). However, no farming type was consistently associated with good performance in all domains.