American Lamb Board (ALB), working with the American sheep industry, has created a new task force of industry stakeholders and research and extension specialists to develop a sheep sustainability report. The report will represent the sheep industry’s commitment to sustainability and describe the industry’s existing practices and goals for continuous improvement in animal care, environmental stewardship, social impacts and industry productivity.
The new sustainability task force was developed in part to address the results of the Michigan State University (MSU) environmental footprint study. The study identified the best methodology to estimate a sheep operation’s total GHG emissions and created a set of metrics, which considers the diversity of how sheep are raised and marketed. MSU gathered production data from multiple sources and calculated GHG emissions from 5 different sheep production systems:
- Intensive production
- Intensive grazing
- Extensive grazing
- Range
- Feedlots
The study identified the major production factors contributing to GHG emissions in US sheep production, which will guide the development of mitigation strategies and best practices for each production system to reduce emissions.
"American Lamb’s environmental story was added to marketing programs the past several months, and we’re gearing up for much more," said Peter Camino, ALB chairman.
Source: American Lamb Board
