Pasture-based livestock systems, often located in High Value Nature farmland areas, hold the greatest potential to deliver public goods across European agricultural systems. They play an important role in preserving agricultural landscapes, farmland biodiversity, cultural heritage, and in sustaining rural development. However, many of these functions are ignored in evaluation frameworks because public goods do not have market price and are often ignored in policy design, so farmers do not get the appropriate incentives to provide them. Different conceptual frameworks can be utilized to evaluate the multiple functions or services of these systems: Multifunctional Agriculture, Ecosystem Services, and Total Economic Value. We analyze the common characteristics of these concepts (e.g. they place human benefits and societal demands at the core of their definitions), their specificities (e.g. use of different units of analysis and spatial-temporal scales), and how they can be embedded in the wider concept of sustainability. Finally, we illustrate how the different concepts can be combined to evaluate pasture-based livestock farming systems from a socio-cultural and economic perspective. The public goods (ecosystem services) provided by representative case studies in Mediterranean and Nordic regions are quantified (also in monetary terms) under different environmental/policy scenarios. The results show that there is a clear underestimation of the socio-cultural and economic values of ecosystem services provided by these farming systems. They also show that the social welfare loss linked to further abandonment of livestock farming, and the associated environmental degradation, is very large. From a societal perspective, it is necessary to jointly measure the biophysical, socio-cultural and monetary values of ecosystem services (market and nonmarket) in order to promote the sustainability of pasture-based livestock systems.

Greenhouse gas emissions from livestock production have a major impact on the environment. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an accepted method to assess those environmental impacts associated with all stages of products life from cradle to grave, and is used to determine the carbon footprint (CF) of animal origin products. CF is just an environmental indicator to assess sustainability of livestock products, such as milk, beef, pork, chicken, eggs, etc. and is used on products packaging as a so-called carbon label to inform supply chain professionals about the relative impacts of different products and activities. From the published studies who assessed the impact of production of milk, beef, lamb, pork, chicken and eggs using LCA, it is concluded that production of 1 kg of beef used most land and energy and had highest global warming potential, followed by production of 1 kg of lamb, pork, chicken, eggs and milk. However, it should be pointed out that LCA results for livestock products do not include environmental consequences of competition for land between humans and animals, and consequences of land-use changes.

Climate change is a growing international concern, and it is well established that the release of greenhouse gases (GHG) is a contributing factor. So far, within animal production, there is little or no concerted effort on long-term breeding strategies to mitigate against GHG from ruminants. In recent years, several consortia have been formed to collect and combine data for genetic evaluation. The discussion areas of these consortia focus on (1) What are methane-determining factors, (2) What are genetic parameters for methane emissions, (3) What proxies can be used, and what is their association with methane emission, and (4) How to move on with breeding for lower emitting animals? The methane-determining factors can be divided into four groups: (1) rumen microbial population, (2) feed intake and diet composition, (3) host physiology and (4) host genetics. The genetic parameters show that enteric methane is a heritable trait, and that it is highly genetically correlated with dry matter intake. So far, the most useful proxies relate to feed intake, milk mid IR spectral data and fatty acids in the milk. To be able to move on with a genetic evaluation and ranking of animals for methane emission, it is crucial to make measurements on commercial farms. In order to make that possible, it will be necessary to develop phenotypes that can be used by the farmer to optimise the production on farm level. Also, it is crucial to develop equipment that makes it possible to make measurements without interfering with everyday routines or identify proxies that are highly related to methane and which could easily be measured on a large scale. International collaboration is essential to make progress in this area. This is both in terms of sharing ideas, experiences and phenotypes, but also in terms of coming to a consensus regarding what phenotype to collect and to select for.

In the last decades, a new awareness on human nutrition has increased and the concept of ‘food’ has changed from ‘source of nutrients for body’s needs’ to ‘health promoter’. Fruits and vegetables have always been considered beneficial for human health. More recent studies have demonstrated that bioactive components are also present in animal-derived foods, such as milk and dairy products. A broader concept of ‘nutritional safety’ implies the knowledge of how the nutrients contained in animal-derived foods positively affect human health, and how to increase their content. The improvement of dairy products fatty acid (FA) composition can involve strategies in animal nutrition. This review aims to discuss the role of FAs supplementation in ameliorating milk fat composition, environmental impact and animal health. In particular, we have focused on the role of n-3 and CLA FAs and how animal nutrition strategies can positively affect both human and animal health. Several studies have demonstrated that through adequate nutritional strategies is possible to manipulate and improve FA composition of milk and derived products (cheese). Moreover, feeding animals with n-3 FAs has proved to reduce emission of methane (CH4), but further nutritional strategies are needed in order to address this crucial environmental issue. In relation to animal health, n-3 FAs have been proved to modulate immune and inflammatory response in dairy ruminants. Recent studies have addressed the potential programming effects of increased maternal n-3 polyunsaturated FAs intake on offspring’s immune functions showing that feeding bioactive FAs to pregnant animals can affect progeny health status.