Improving Human Diets and Welfare through Using Herbivore-Based Foods: 1. Human and Animal Perspectives

Simple Summary: Optimal human health requires the adequate provision of all nutrients in the correct proportions, ensuring the provision of energy and essential small molecules. All primates, including humans, are omnivorous, but our most striking difference from other primates is the remarkable diversity of diet we consume. The aim here is to examine the benefits and possible unintended consequences of using herbivore-based foods on human and animal health and welfare. The advantages of using grazed pasture for ruminant meat and milk production include (1) animal-sourced foods contain essential amino acids and micronutrients, and almost always have a higher digestibility than plant proteins, (2) greater use of pasture to feed animals could result in less use of food that could be used for human consumption, e.g., maize, soybean, and cereal crops, (3) ruminants can provide food from land otherwise unable to be used for cropping, consume feed that cannot be eaten directly by humans, and provide more than just food—they also provide leather and fibre. Animal-sourced foods are an important part of the human diet, and while some unintended consequences associated with animal health and herd management have occurred, technologies and systems to provide solutions to these are available and under refinement.

Abstract: Human health and diet are closely linked. The diversity of diets consumed by humans is remarkable, and most often incorporates both animal and plant-based foods. However, there has been a recent call for a reduced intake of animal-based foods due to concerns associated with human health in developed countries and perceived impacts on the environment. Yet, evidence for the superior nutritional quality of animal-sourced food such as meat, milk, and eggs, compared with plant-based foods, indicates that consumption of animal-sourced food should and will continue. This being the case, the aim here is to examine issues associated with animal-sourced foods in terms of both the quantification and mitigation of unintended consequences associated with environment, animal health, and herd management. Therefore, we examined the role of animal proteins in human societies with reference to the UN-FAO issues associated with animal-sourced foods. The emphasis is on dominant grazed pastoral-based systems, as used in New Zealand and Ireland, both with temperate moist climates and a similar reliance on global markets for generating net wealth from pastoral agricultural products. In conclusion, animal-sourced foods are shown to be an important part of the human diet. Production systems can result in unintended consequences associated with environment, animal health, and herd management, and there are technologies and systems to provide solutions to these that are available or under refinement.