“Consolidation of the sustainability of the Belgian Blue cattle breeding industry”
Sustainable development and the reduction of greenhouse gases are a priority for European countries. One of the Greendeal objectives for Belgium is to reduce the production of greenhouse gases – GHGs – by 30% by 2030.
This becomes a determining factor in the commercial viability of a company. Inevitably, companies in the primary sector will have to anticipate this evolution and develop products likely to meet this demand in order to maintain a competitive advantage but also to gain access to new markets.
The objective of the Blanc Bleu Vert consortium is to enable two Walloon companies to develop a commercial policy around sustainability. For Dumoulin, this is oriented towards a feed offer and for Inovéo, it aims at a racial characterisation of Belgian Blue White (BBB) on environmental criteria.
The CRA-W and the ULiège are the two scientific partners in this project. They will contribute their expertise, in particular for the implementation of indirect, rapid and inexpensive measurements of sustainability criteria such as enteric methane emissions and ingestion. It will thus be possible to lay the foundations for a genetic evaluation with a view, in the long run, to orienting selection towards more efficient animals that emit less GHG (both in purebred BBBc and in crossbred dairy cattle).
Crossbreeding is one of the WWF’s recommendations to meet the growing demand for meat and to minimise the environmental impact of its production. The project will therefore contribute to achieving the Greendeal objectives.
