Tackling the future challenges of Organic Animal Husbandry - vTI

! Agriculture and Forestry Research, Special Issue No 362 (Braunschweig, 2012) ISSN 0376-0723
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and 1.78 for C.W (varying between 1.59 and 1.92). For RuttOpt the mean number of stops per route
was slightly higher at 2.87.
Spatial analysis of slaughter capacity
The results from the virtual landscapes showed that by adding small abattoirs to a landscape where
only the large ones are present can reduce the slaughter transport distances by 29 %. The slaughter
transport model showed that by optimizing the choice of slaughterhouse to which animals are sent
while the number of abattoirs were kept at the original 46, transport distances could be reduced by
40 % compared to if the animals were sent to the actual abattoirs of 2008. The number of slaughterhouses
could even be decreased to 13 and the resulting transport distances would still be 25 % lower
compared to the real transports. However, the results showed that keeping a larger number of
abattoirs can be important from a welfare point of view, because there were 66 % fewer animals
that were transported on long journeys (4-10 hours) if there were 46 slaughterhouses compared to if
there were 13.
Discussion
By using real transport data from a whole year we could show that the RuttOpt-method could reduce
the transport distances the most compared to simulated choices made by the drivers (D.C) and
another heuristic commonly used when planning transports (C.W). Due to welfare concerns (Raussi
et al. 2005) and possibility for spread of infectious disease (Wray et al. 1991), the number of stops
made on a route should be kept at a minimum. However, this is in conflict to the fact that fewer
stops will increase the shortest distance that is achievable. However, RuttOpt constructed routes
with a mean of 2.87 stops; this is lower than 4.1 which have been reported for real routes (Ljungberg
et al. 2007) and shows that using good optimization techniques does not only reduce CO2
emissions and transport costs, but is also beneficial to animal welfare and can lower the risk of
spreading infectious disease. We have also shown that by keeping a well planned distribution of
slaughter capacity it is possible to greatly reduce the necessary transport distances.
Suggestions to tackle the future challenges of organic animal husbandry
With small changes such as by making sure that animals are sent to local abattoirs and by introducing
route optimization methods into the slaughter industry as well as by forming national strategies
concerning the distribution of slaughtering capacity a large improvement of cattle transportation can
be achieved. These are straightforward ideas that we believe would be relatively easy to apply to the
current transport system, and the benefits would be very much in line with the principles of organic
farming, relating to both sustainability and animal health. A challenge is to find the means that embrace
the community of farmers and abattoirs to jointly apply these methods.
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