Food Safety
And Public Health
Food quality can be defined by food safety, nutritional value, and sensory and technological quality. Improvement of food quality is an important aspect of animal breeding and has become more important over time; nutritional value, human health features, sensory qualities visual appeal, and processing characteristics are targets for animal breeders nowadays.
Food safety is an important factor in animal breeding; its importance have been rising over the years. Animal breeding and reproduction have limited direct possibilities in influencing food safety and public health. Indirect there are more possibilities in improving food safety; e.g. by decreasing the incidence of food-borne infections. Breeders organisations try to improve the natural genetic disease resistance of an animal; this decreases the need for medication and the occurrence of zoonoses, and improves food safety and human health.
Progress can be made in the animal breeding and reproduction sector through the selection of robust animals that can cope with their environment. These animals will likely be less vulnerable for diseases, and thus the need for medicines decreases. Animals resistant reduces the transmission too.
Thus, Breeding for better Animal Health is part of the solutions to reduce Antimicrobial resistance.