Rationalising development of classification systems describing livestock production systems for disease burden analysis within the Global Burden of Animal Diseases programme.

The heterogeneity that exists across the global spectrum of livestock production means that livestock productivity, efficiency, health expenditure and health outcomes vary across production systems. To ensure that burden of disease estimates are specific to the represented livestock population and people reliant upon them, livestock populations need to be systematically classified into different types of production system, reflective of the heterogeneity across production systems. This paper explores the data currently available of livestock production system classifications and animal health through a scoping review as a foundation for the development of a framework that facilitates more specific estimates of livestock disease burdens. A top-down framework to classification is outlined based on a systematic review of existing classification methods and provides a basis for simple grouping of livestock at global scale. The proposed top-down classification framework, which is dominated by commodity focus of production along with intensity of resource use, may have less relevance at the sub-national level in some jurisdictions and will need to be informed and adapted with information on how countries themselves categorize livestock and their production systems. The findings in this study provide a foundation for analysing animal health burdens across a broad level of production systems. The developed framework will fill a major gap in how livestock production and health are currently approached and analysed.

Approximating the global economic (market) value of farmed animals.

Understanding the global economic importance of farmed animals to society is essential as a baseline for decision making about future food systems. We estimated the annual global economic (market) value of live animals and primary production outputs, e.g., meat, eggs, milk, from terrestrial and aquatic farmed animal systems. The results suggest that the total global market value of farmed animals ranges between 1.61 and 3.3 trillion USD (2018) and is expected to be similar in absolute terms to the market value of crop outputs (2.57 trillion USD). The cattle sector dominates the market value of farmed animals. The study highlights the need to consider other values of farmed animals to society, e.g., finance/insurance value and cultural value, in decisions about the sector's future.