 I'm Jimmy Smith. I'm the Director General of the International Livestock Research Institute. Now at this conference on livestock and extinction, a lot of focus has been on cutting down meat consumption, particularly in the rich world. What's the perspective you're trying to communicate here? I'm trying to communicate that the view from the north and the south are quite different. That in North American Europe, where we eat somewhere between 75 and 125 kilograms per capita per year, we need to cut down. That's no doubt, I think. But in the developing world, for example, in Africa, where per capita consumption is just about 13 kilograms, they need to eat a little bit more. And so I'm trying to get the message across that it's not a one-size-fit all. There are different circumstances in different parts of the world. And in dealing with this issue of over-consumption in environment and so on, we should not generalize our messages. It should be nuanced in relation to the variable circumstances of people in the developing world. Now, a lot of meat in the rich world is produced in intensively farmed units with a lot of feed brought in, which is spreading in around the world now. What kind of farming systems do you think matter in doing this? It is true that so-called industrial farming is getting into the developing world and in some places has gotten into a significant way. But it is also true that most of the animal-sourced foods in the developing countries are produced and consumed in those countries produced by smallholders. So smallholders in Vietnam, India, Pakistan, all over Africa dominate the food chain, particularly in animal-sourced foods. And this is their contribution, is not only to national food and nutritional security, but also by participating in livestock chains, production chains, value chains. They are able to become commercial farmers and therefore escape their poverty. A small scale, but commercial nonetheless. So the work we do is focused on research, on helping people to use their livestock to improve their livelihoods. So what kind of solutions are you able to offer? Well, on average, say in Ethiopia, the dairy cow give one litre per day. When in Europe here it's 20 litres or so, we want to improve the productivity of that dairy cow. So we offer better feeding strategies, better health strategies, better management or husbandry. So that farmer who are mostly women, and in many cases are women, are able to improve the productivity of their cow. So they have more milk to sell, but in increasing the productivity, which means improving their viability, they also cut emissions per unit of product. So the same cow today that produces one litre, produces five tomorrow, they would have cut the emissions per unit of product by a significant margin. So those are some of the solutions we do work on policy, we do work on markets and pricing, we do work on animal health, vaccinology development and so on and so on. We do the range of livestock issues, but our work is focused on small holders in the developing world. And is this focusing on the kind of indigenous breeds rather than bringing in the kind of Holstein-Friesians which are designed to be housed and given intensive feeding? Very much so. Traditionally, developing countries seeking to become self-sufficient or even exporter of animal source foods, try to leapfrog the development technological continuum. So they try to bring in to these environments high productive Holsteins, for example. In many cases, the ambient managerial and other conditions did not match such an expensive improved genotype and therefore the animal produced, performed worse than the indigenous ones. So we have modern technology now which allows us to do breeding and genetics, the genomics, genomic applications to help us select among these indigenous animals to get higher production to benefit from their adaptation to heat stress and disease and so on. So yes, we focus very much on those crossbreeds which already exist, but also on the indigenous populations to get the elite amongst them. What do you make of the kind of debates we're having at the moment about the role of livestock in the future? I think it's too generalized. We take a figure from one source, one example, and extrapolate it to the whole world. And we know, for example, based on our research, which we haven't published yet but working on, that emissions, the emissions factors used to extrapolate from the developed to developing world overestimates what's happening in the developing world. So those kinds of generalizations of how much water and so on, the number of waters taken from feedlots, most of the animals are not produced in feedlots. So let's avoid generalizations and be a more specific, more nuanced. Let's reduce the sensationalization of the issues because it's starting to militate against investments in the developing world by development donors. If their publics are so against livestock, they will not invest in livestock in the developing world. That means the opportunity for small holders to escape their poverty to benefit from food and nutrition would be lost and most of those are women. It militates very drastically against the development objectives that we seek. So really, one of the points you're making is the ritual should focus on the problems it has with its livestock production and sort them out but not export them unnecessarily into the small farming communities in developing countries. Exactly. Let's not extrapolate to the same to the developing world. It's a more nuanced approach. The issues are real. We want to make all agriculture more environmentally sustainable, including livestock and so we should deal with that. But the answer to that is not to extrapolate the conditions of the developed world into the developing one and the solutions are often quite different. And one of the other things I think is not export the way we've done things in the rich world into those who wish to become better off. Exactly. The developing world, which is now trying to forge a development path in agriculture including livestock, have the opportunity to benefit from the mistakes that were made in the developed world so that we have, and the benefit of hindsight, can pick the best rather than just extrapolate from what happened before.