Animal board invited review: Improving animal health and welfare in the transition of livestock farming systems: Towards social acceptability and sustainability.

The need to integrate more clearly societal expectations on livestock farming has led the authors of this article to consider that livestock farming systems must be redesigned to position health and welfare at the heart of their objectives. This article proposes a vision of the advances in knowledge required at different scales to contribute to this transformation. After defining health and welfare of animals, the article emphasises the need to consider health in a broader perspective, to deepen the question of positive emotional experiences regarding welfare, and raises the question of how to assess these two elements on farms. The positive interactions between health and welfare are presented. Some possible tensions between them are also discussed, in particular when improving welfare by providing a more stimulating and richer environment such as access to outdoor increases the risk of infectious diseases. Jointly improving health and welfare of animals poses a number of questions at various scales, from the animal level to the production chain. At the animal level, the authors highlight the need to explore: the long-term links between better welfare and physiological balance, the role of microbiota, the psycho-neuro-endocrine mechanisms linking positive mental state and health, and the trade-off between the physiological functions of production, reproduction and immunity. At the farm level, in addition to studying the relationships at the group level between welfare, health and production, the paper supports the idea of co-constructing innovative systems with livestock farmers, as well as analysing the cost, acceptability and impact of improved systems on their working conditions and well-being. At the production chain or territory levels, various questions are raised. These include studying the best strategies to improve animal health and welfare while preserving economic viability, the labelling of products and the consumers' willingness to pay, the consequences of heterogeneity in animal traits on the processing of animal products, and the spatial distribution of livestock farming and the organisation of the production and value chain. At the level of the citizen and consumer, one of the challenges is to better inter-relate sanitary and health perspectives on the one hand, and welfare concerns on the other hand. There is also a need to improve citizens' knowledge on livestock farming, and to develop more intense and constructive exchanges between livestock farmers, the livestock industry and citizens. These difficult issues plead for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research involving various scientific disciplines and the different stakeholders, including public policy makers through participatory research.

Generation and distribution of productivity gains in beef cattle farming: Who are the winners and losers between 1980 and 2015?

Surplus accounting is a method for evaluating trends in how a firm's productivity factors (intermediate inputs, capital, land, labour) are performing and how the productivity gains are redistributed between agents in the economy. Here the surplus accounting method was applied on a database of 164 Charolais-area suckler cattle farms running from 1980 to 2015. Over this 36-year period - with differences per sub-period - the cumulative productivity surplus (PS) increased at a low rate of +0.17%/year (i.e. cumulative volume of outputs produced increased slightly more than cumulative volume of inputs used). This timid increase in PS is linked to the constant expansion in labour productivity whereas other factor productivities have shrunk. The observable period-wide macrotrends are that commercial farm businesses struggle to protect their revenues, we also observe a slight fall in input prices, land rent and financing costs, and a huge climb in direct support-policy payments. The bulk of the cumulative economic surplus has been captured downstream - 64% downstream of the cattle value chain as a drop in prices, and 22% downstream of other value chains (chiefly cereals). It emerges that the productivity gains in beef cattle farming mostly benefit the downstream value chain (packers-processors, distributors and consumers), whereas it is mainly government money backing this drop in prices of agricultural output. Here we see the principal of the 1992 'MacSharry' reform at work, with a transfer from the taxpayer through direct support-policy payments through to the consumer via lower prices. The simple fact that farmers' incomes are stagnating is a clear indication that they are net losers in this distribution of productivity gains, despite the improvement in labour factor productivity.

Direct and indirect impacts of crop-livestock organization on mixed crop-livestock systems sustainability: a model-based study.

Crop-livestock production is claimed more sustainable than specialized production systems. However, the presence of controversial studies suggests that there must be conditions of mixing crop and livestock productions to allow for higher sustainable performances. Whereas previous studies focused on the impact of crop-livestock interactions on performances, we posit here that crop-livestock organization is a key determinant of farming system sustainability. Crop-livestock organization refers to the percentage of the agricultural area that is dedicated to each production. Our objective is to investigate if crop-livestock organization has both a direct and an indirect impact on mixed crop-livestock (MC-L) sustainability. In that objective, we build a whole-farm model parametrized on representative French sheep and crop farming systems in plain areas (Vienne, France). This model permits simulating contrasted MC-L systems and their subsequent sustainability through the following indicators of performance: farm income, production, N balance, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (/kg product) and MJ consumption (/kg product). Two MC-L systems were simulated with contrasted crop-livestock organizations (MC20-L80: 20% of crops; MC80-L20: 80% of crops). A first scenario - constraining no crop-livestock interactions in both MC-L systems - permits highlighting that crop-livestock organization has a significant direct impact on performances that implies trade-offs between objectives of sustainability. Indeed, the MC80-L20 system is showing higher performances for farm income (+44%), livestock production (+18%) and crop GHG emissions (-14%) whereas the MC20-L80 system has a better N balance (-53%) and a lower livestock MJ consumption (-9%). A second scenario - allowing for crop-livestock interactions in both MC20-L80 and MC80-L20 systems - stated that crop-livestock organization has a significant indirect impact on performances. Indeed, even if crop-livestock interactions permit improving performances, crop-livestock organization influences the capacity of MC-L systems to benefit from crop-livestock interactions. As a consequence, we observed a decreasing performance trade-off between MC-L systems for farm income (-4%) and crop GHG emissions (-10%) whereas the gap increases for nitrogen balance (+23%), livestock production (+6%) - MJ consumption (+16%) - GHG emissions (+5%) and crop MJ consumption (+5%). However, the indirect impact of crop-livestock organization doesn't reverse the trend of trade-offs between objectives of sustainability determined by the direct impact of crop-livestock organization. As a conclusion, crop-livestock organization is a key factor that has to be taken into account when studying the sustainability of mixed crop-livestock systems.

Productivity and technical efficiency of suckler beef production systems: trends for the period 1990 to 2012.

Over the past 23 years (1990 to 2012), French beef cattle farms have expanded in size and increased labour productivity by over 60%, chiefly, though not exclusively, through capital intensification (labour-capital substitution) and simplifying herd feeding practices (more concentrates used). The technical efficiency of beef sector production systems, as measured by the ratio of the volume value (in constant euros) of farm output excluding aids to volume of intermediate consumption, has fallen by nearly 20% while income per worker has held stable thanks to subsidies and the labour productivity gains made. This aggregate technical efficiency of beef cattle systems is positively correlated to feed self-sufficiency, which is in turn negatively correlated to farm and herd size. While volume of farm output per hectare of agricultural area has not changed, forage feed self-sufficiency decreased by 6 percentage points. The continual increase in farm size and labour productivity has come at a cost of lower production-system efficiency - a loss of technical efficiency that 20 years of genetic, technical, technological and knowledge-driven progress has barely managed to offset.

Mixed crop-livestock farming systems: a sustainable way to produce beef? Commercial farms results, questions and perspectives.

Mixed crop-livestock (MC-L) farming has gained broad consensus as an economically and environmentally sustainable farming system. Working on a Charolais-area suckler cattle farms network, we subdivided the 66 farms of a constant sample, for 2 years (2010 and 2011), into four groups: (i) 'specialized conventional livestock farms' (100% grassland-based farms (GF), n=7); (ii) 'integrated conventional crop-livestock farms' (specialized farms that only market animal products but that grow cereal crops on-farm for animal feed, n=31); (iii) 'mixed conventional crop-livestock farms' (farms that sell beef and cereal crops to market, n=21); and (iv) organic farms (n=7). We analyse the differences in structure and in drivers of technical, economic and environmental performances. The figures for all the farms over 2 years (2010 and 2011) were pooled into a single sample for each group. The farms that sell crops alongside beef miss out on potential economies of scale. These farms are bigger than specialized beef farms (with or without on-farm feed crops) and all types of farms show comparable economic performances. The big MC-L farms make heavier and consequently less efficient use of inputs. This use of less efficient inputs also weakens their environmental performances. This subpopulation of suckler cattle farms appears unable to translate a MC-L strategy into economies of scope. Organic farms most efficiently exploit the diversity of herd feed resources, thus positioning organic agriculture as a prototype MC-L system meeting the core principles of agroecology.

[Adenocarcinoma of the ethmoid sinus in woodworkers. Retrospective study of 25 cases]. / Adénocarcinomes de l'ethmoïde chez les travailleurs du bois. Etude rétrospective de 25 cas.

A retrospective oncological study was performed in 25 woodworkers, in whom an adenocarcinoma of the ethmoid sinuses was discovered between March 1985 and December 1993. All patients were males with a mean age of 57 years, and a mean duration of wood dust exposure of 24 years. Signs of nasal obstruction, drainage, and discomfort were present in all cases. Ophthalmological findings were a poor prognosis indicator. It was possible to precisely evaluate treatment and outcome in 23 cases. The majority of tumors were classified as T3 or T4 (72%), with extension beyond the ethmoid sinuses; all were in contact with the roof of the ethmoidal sinuses. Extension was predominantly into the orbital and intracranial cavities as compared with extension posteriorly or into the maxillary sinuses. Treatment was identical in the 25 patients: a) combined surgery including a paranasal and a neurosurgical approach, b) postoperative radiotherapy. Results were expressed in terms of morbidity related to surgery and the oncologic outcome. Operative morbidity and mortality were substantially reduced with reconstruction of the roof of the ethmoidal sinuses. Meticulous excision, in addition to postoperative radiotherapy, resulted in a decreased rate of local recurrence (26%). On the other hand, metastasis were encountered more frequently (30%). Radiotherapy was insufficient when macroscopic excision was incomplete. Chemotherapy was used as palliative treatment in the event of a recurrence and/or metastases. Survival rate was 68% at 3 years, and 48% at 5 years. Most complications and recurrences arose within the first two years. Exophthalmos, intracranial extension, incompleteremoval, and extensive class T4 tumors were associated with a poor prognosis. Optimal therapy for malignant tumors of the ethmoid sinuses requires combined transfacial and neurosurgical approaches that allow precise assessment of tumor extension and adequate excision, yielding an improved oncologic outcome. Followed by radiotherapy, this association can result in a remission. Patient prognosis depends essentially on management of the initial lesion.