A link between PLF, animal welfare and LCA: the objectives of SUS3D project

The sustainable development of animal-derived products is one of the greatest challenges for next years, due to the increasing pressure on the livestock sector to meet the growing demand of a growing population, but at the same time reducing the resource requirements and the environmental impacts, safeguarding animal welfare. Therefore, the environmental, social, and economic sustainability of livestock farms are widely acknowledged in the European Green Deal where the transition to sustainable food production is recognised as a key element for the future development of the planet. Strong efforts are currently being made to convert livestock farms to more sustainable and technological management, but there is still a long way to go. In the procedures tools nowadays used to assess the sustainability of farms, animal health and welfare are usually neglected or not organically integrated despite the numerous validated proto-cols existing their assessment. Thus, innovative approaches should be developed with a “One Sustainability” perspective, therefore taking into account each ecosystem in-volved in animal production: the environment, the animals, and the humans. The main objective of the SUS3D project is to define and develop a tool, based on a big data ap-proach, integrating the different assessments of the different ecosystems and dimen-sions (environmental, economic, social) of sustainability for dairy cow farms and for a prospective decision-making, which aims at a comprehensive optimization. In the con-text of SUS3D project will be shown the potentialities of PLF and data analysis tools and will be clarified as innovation and digitalization can improve the competitiveness, sustainability, animal welfare, health and productivity of farms.