Author(s)

M. Helms & H. Aiking

Abstract

Food and the environment: towards sustainability indicators for protein production M. Helms & H. Aiking Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit, The Netherlands Abstract Food is of vital importance to the development, health and productivity of humans, but the production is at large cost to the existence, resilience and productivity of natural ecosystems. The PROFETAS research programme is concerned with the development of a toolkit for the sustainable production of protein foods. This is based on the hypotheses that a shift in the Western diet from animal proteins to plant proteins is 1. environmentally more sustainable than present trends, 2. technologically feasible, and 3. socially desirable. PROFETAS consists of sixteen interlocking projects. The present project focuses on the first hypothesis. It aims to supply a method to assess the environmental effects of alternative protein production and consumption chains. This should facilitate a deliberate choice of the most sustai

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