Where do the losses go instead?
Cattle and pigs that cannot be sent to slaughter are destroyed, mainly by incineration.
Milk from cows that have been treated with antibiotics or are under quarantine should be poured into the manure well and should not be given to calves as it can affect the calf’s health and increase the risk of resistant bacteria.
Source: Swedish Agency for Agriculture
“The losses were bigger before,” says Theres Strand, vice president of Swedish Meat Companies.
There are several reasons for the losses that occur when pigs, cattle and milk cannot move forward in the food chain.
Injuries and diseases can lead to animals having to be euthanized during breeding. And if the animals are treated with medicine during the withdrawal period, neither meat nor milk may become food.
— Everyone who works with animals has the ambition that as many as possible should be healthy and survive. We have been working on that for a long time and – but we are not satisfied. Both from a waste perspective and an animal care perspective, it is important that the animals survive, says Theres Strand, vice president at Svenska Köttföretagen.
13,000 tons
Losses of beef in 2020 amounted to 8 percent of production, which corresponds to 13,000 tons of beef in slaughtered weight, two reports produced by the Swedish Agency for Agriculture show.
The corresponding figures for pig production were 3 percent and 7,000 tons in slaughter weight. Of the milk production, 0.4 percent, corresponding to 11,000 tons of milk, was not food.
— It sounds like a lot when you convert it into, for example, food portions, then it becomes a breathtaking sum. But we’ve been improving survivability all the time. We have better animal care, more vaccines, better medicines and housing. The losses were greater before, says Strand.
She explains the differences between beef and pig by saying that it is often very young pigs that die on the farm, while it is a larger proportion of full-grown cattle that are killed on the farm. Hence the share in the losses in each group is different.
Lots of black pudding
In addition, the total slaughter weight is different for beef and pig.
— It is difficult to compare the figures directly. They are two different species of animals and you cannot compare them directly to each other, says Strand.
One of the reports also shows that just over half of the edible by-products – such as blood, cheek, heart and kidney – from pigs and cattle became food in 2020. This is because the demand for these products is relatively small.
The 13,000 tons of blood that did not become food could have been enough for 156 million portions of black pudding, according to the Swedish Agency for Agriculture.
— Consumers may have to change their attitude to what we eat. We may also need product development to be able to use the by-products in new ways, says Strand.
Greenhouse gas emissions
All of this also has an environmental and climate impact. In 2020, the losses produced a total greenhouse gas emission of almost 330,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, the report shows. This corresponds to 9 percent of the total greenhouse gas emissions from animal husbandry.
TT: So how can you reduce the losses?
— We can spend more money on research regarding animal diseases, work with better infection control and breeding operations as well as product development regarding feed and housing systems.
“However, we will never reach zero, it’s impossible,” says Strand.