Animal Health and Sustainability: A Global Data Analysis

Oxford Analytica is pleased to announce the publication of ‘Animal Health and Sustainability: A Global Data Analysis’, a report produced for HealthforAnimals analysing the relationship between animal health and the economy, environment and society.

The research for the report, conducted by Oxford Analytica, used a unique regression model to measure different animal health indicators, with findings showing key associations between livestock diseases and global livestock productivity, impacting the economy, climate change and global food security:

• A 60% global vaccination rate for beef cattle correlates to a productivity rise of more than 50%.
• A fall in disease levels of 10 percentage points is associated with an 800 million tonne decrease in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
• Poultry disease was associated with a 5% rise in hunger in 2019 – equal to an additional 34 million people going hungry.

The report also builds upon existing research in the field with case studies that demonstrate how livestock disease control can meet global needs and targets, such as:

• Showing through UNFAO data that scaling up existing practices in animal health and husbandry means livestock could potentially serve more than 9 billion people in 2050 without increasing emissions.
• Calculating that livestock disease losses represent $358.4 billion in lost production per year.
• Estimating that every percentage point reduction in global beef cattle losses due to disease could provide enough additional production to meet the consumption needs of 317 million people.

Oxford Analytica’s model was built on data covering 180 countries from 2005 to 2022, sourced from the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) and UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (UNFAO). The model uses robust multiple regression analysis to identify statistically significant correlations or “associations” between variables such as vaccination, disease levels and productivity in livestock species.