In ancient times, chickens and pigs were raised in a very sustainable fashion. In prehistory, people used 
animals to convert their waste into valuable meat. The sustainable primordial pig and primordial chicken have now inspired a restructuring of the Dutch livestock sector. How can we work together towards a sustainable livestock sector?
Protein dialogue
Together with civic organisations and groups from the production chain, three Dutch ministers, –Verburg (Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality), Cramer (Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment) and Koenders (Development Cooperation) – are conducting the 'protein dialogue'. The aim of this dialogue is to think about new, sustainable ways of producing proteins for a world population of perhaps 9 billion people in the year 2050. These will be 9 billion people who will be more prosperous than the current population of 6 billion, and who will want to eat proteins more often.
Animal protein production
The participants in the 'protein dialogue' often think of solutions that replace animal proteins, meat and eggs with plant proteins or proteins from insects or algae. Wageningen UR Livestock Research believes there are also good reasons to consider the contribution that animal production can make to sustainable food production. One of these reasons is the traditional function of the animals as a ‘smart’ waste disposal method for farmers. During much of history, pigs and chickens have converted household waste into meat and eggs. This is a very sustainable way to upgrade residue streams. This is certainly the case when you realise that we in the Netherlands throw away approximately 30% of our food.
Thinking in terms of cycles
There should be a new design for the Dutch livestock sector; this design would serve as the basic concept that will focus on the feed and manure cycles in Northwest Europe, instead of importing animal feed from South America and Asia. In this new approach, thinking in terms of cycles, upgrading waste and subsidiary streams in food production has an important place.
There is another pragmatic reason to think about animal protein production. It will be difficult to forbid billions of people in Asia and Africa to eat meat just when they are becoming prosperous enough to afford it. They will probably want to eat meat, so it is sensible to avoid putting all our energy into thinking about alternative protein sources, but to also think about how meat can be produced sustainably.
Knowledge agenda
Wageningen UR Livestock Research is currently working on a knowledge agenda with the most important questions that must be answered to ensure that the Dutch livestock sector can become 100% sustainable. One of these questions concerns breeding and genomics. New, cycle-based livestock concepts will probably benefit more from versatile animals, such as those that are capable of converting a wider range of feed into sustainable food. This is only one of many questions. Wageningen UR Livestock Research therefore wants to engage in dialogue with the government, the livestock sector and civic organizations in order to determine where the challenges are, and to work together to develop a strategy for sustainable livestock production in 2023 (this is known as the Verburg agenda).