Healthier animals need fewer natural resources, allowing them to provide more food, and companionship for less feed, water, and land. Keeping animals healthy is central to achieving the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) by 2030.
Animal health innovations can reduce the threat of disease by strengthening immunity, improving prevention, enabling earlier and more specific diagnosis, and facilitating more accurate, effective treatment. These innovations will lead to lower emissions, reduced natural resource use, and fewer animals lost. Yet for all the promise of growing veterinary knowledge and expertise, it is taking animal health companies increasingly longer and becoming more expensive to bring new products to market.
Sustainable Benefits of New Vaccines
More effective vaccines and delivery mechanisms can help protect more animals against diseases, which means:
- Protecting the livelihoods of the millions worldwide who rely on livestock (SDG 1, 8 and 10)
- Reducing the need for antibiotics, which minimizes the risk of antimicrobial resistance and helps protect public and environmental health (SDG 3, 15)
- Reducing the risk of zoonotic diseases passing from animals to people by preventing them in animals in the first place (SDG 3)
Sustainable Benefits of Alternatives to Antibiotics
Developing new products that prevent or treat bacterial infection while reducing the burden on antibiotics offers benefits for animal health and wellbeing, as well as:
- Improving efficiencies in animal agriculture, which generates greater income for farmers (SDG 1 and 8) and produces more food for the global supply chain (SDG2)
- Reducing the risk of antimicrobial resistance, which strengthens global public health (SDG3)
- Reducing the potential impact of antibiotic use on the environment (SDG12)
Sustainable Benefits of Digital Technologies
Early detection of diseases and individually targeted treatments can bring several benefits for animal health and help support sustainable development, for instance:
- Reducing costs associated with sick animals and supporting agricultural productivity around the world (SDG 1, 2 and 8)
- Optimizing the use of labor and creating new opportunities for agricultural workers and youth (SDG 1 and 8)
- Improving the accuracy of diagnostics and treatments, thereby reducing the need for antibiotics and helping protect public health (SDG 3)
Sustainable Benefits of Diagnostics
Improved diagnostics – remote as well as on-site – will help protect animals against severe disease, which also means:
- Safeguarding the livelihoods of millions of people who rely on livestock (SDG 1, 2 and 8)
- Reducing the use of antibiotics and thus helping minimize potential antimicrobial resistance – a major threat to public health (SDG 3)
- Limiting the transmission of zoonotic diseases that spread between animals and humans (SDG 3)
Sustainable Benefits of Parasite Control
New methods for parasite control can help improve animal health and manage resistance to existing technologies, which can deliver sustainability improvements such as:
- Greater productivity as a result of improved health (SDG1, 2 and 8)
- Reducing the potential impact of parasiticide use on the environment (SDG 12)
Sustainable Benefits of Nutrition
Improving animal health through precision nutrition, feed additives, and biological parasiticides offers multiple benefits to animal health and wellbeing, as well as greater sustainability, such as:
- Greater productivity as a result of improved health (SDG1, 2 and 8)
- Increased levels of traceability for consumers (SDG12)
- Fewer resources needed and lower emissions (SDG13 and 15)
Sustainable Benefits of Safe Development
Developing ways to test new drugs or treatments that require fewer animals can protect animal welfare, and make product research and development safer and more sustainable through:
- Developing treatments faster and with more precision to protect agricultural livelihoods (SDG1 and 8)
- Sharing knowledge of biomarkers across human and animal health (SDG3)
- Reducing the cost and losses of live animals (SDG12 and 15)