Genetic Technology, Sustainable Animal Agriculture and Global Climate Change

World food demand is expected to more than double in the next 50 years. During this time, our planet will likely undergo dramatic climate change that will impose new challenges on our capacity to maintain even current levels of food production let alone meet the anticipated demand. All of us at this conference were born and raised during the last century when the globe experienced a doubling of the human population. Little did we know then how our lives would depend on the remarkable increase in global food production that characterises that century, an increase underwritten by astonishing advances in genetics and agricultural science. Nor did we realise that the 20th century expansion of the global larder came at such great environmental cost, a cost born largely by the conversion of natural ecosystems to agriculture with the resulting destruction of the essential services those ecosystems provide. Genetics has always been the currency for assuring population success in changing environments. Although technology alone will be insufficient, the development and application of new advanced genetic technologies will be absolutely necessary to feed the world our children and grandchildren will know as their own. The EnviropigTM represents a model of environmental-genetic innovation with the potential to dramatically enhance the sustainability of animal agriculture in an increasingly hungry world intoxicated by its own waste.