Thompson et al., 2023

Ecosystem management using livestock: embracing diversity and respecting ecological principles | Animal Frontiers | Oxford Academic

• The main argument in Thompson et al. is that some forms of livestock farming may have neutral or even positive effects on the environment.
• Particularly, they note that "...current high-productivity livestock systems are reliant on intensive production of feed on arable land, thereby charging the environment and climate. But these unfavorable consequences of how intensive livestock production is currently managed, do not justify complete abstinence from livestock." Whilst this statement is technically correct, we emphasise that finding beneficial effects of livestock in specific scenarios does not justify our current levels of animal agriculture. We should note that Thompson et al., do acknowledge that moving from intensive livestock farming to more circular farming would likely require us to farm fewer animals. However, we question whether the circular approaches proposed in their article would require anywhere close to the number of animals we currently farm.
• They argue that because there are no Megafauna left in Europe (due to humans driving them extinct?) if livestock were not used to keep local plant life in check, it could result in "biodiversity losses and the collapse of some high nature value ecosystems". However, they provide only a handful of citations to support this claim, and one citation appears to mildly contradict their arguments. They cite a meta analysis by Plieninger et al., (2014)^[1] that shows an small positive effect overall of abandoning land on biodiversity, though they note that outcomes do vary.
• They argue for a diversity in animal agriculture. But given that 70% of birds are farmed poultry and 60% of mammals are livestock^[2]