Robust regulations must be put in place to protect the welfare of farmed animals before genome-editing procedures are approved for commercial livestock, ethicists have warned.

Powerful gene-editing techniques have the potential to improve modern farming by making animals resistant to heat and disease, reducing methane emissions and increasing productivity, but the same approaches could also exacerbate animal welfare problems, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics says.

Though farms have yet to embrace genome editing for animals, its potential in agriculture has driven intense research efforts around the world, leading to experimental animals that demonstrate the viability of the approach. In September, the UK government announced it would bring forward legislation that would pave the way for some genome editing to be allowed in animal breeding.

The UK’s chief scientist has suggested solutions to help UK agriculture reduce its environmental impact and meet its net-zero carbon targets. Professor Gideon Henderson, chief scientific adviser at Defra, laid out the climate challenge for agriculture while addressing a Westminster Food & Nutrition Forum policy conference online this week.

“We need to free up land for trees and biomass. We need to get off some of our peat and re-wet it, and we need to decrease the emissions that we have from our meat production sector,” he stressed.

First, Prof Henderson identified protein consumption as an area to tackle. “We eat too much protein at the moment and we should change our diet,” he said. “We should think about alternatives – more peas, more beans.”

Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon rainforest has hit its highest level in over 15 years, official data shows.

A report by Brazil's space research agency (Inpe) found that deforestation increased by 22% in a year.

Brazil was among a number of nations who promised to end and reverse deforestation by 2030 during the COP26 climate summit.

The UK Government’s top climate change advisor has warned vegan activists are ‘the opponent’ of climate change mitigation.

Lord Deben, who chairs the influential Climate Change Committee (CCC), told the East of England Farming Conference that vegans must be prevented from ‘taking over’ climate change debates.

He also urged the public to eat British beef if they were serious about mitigating their own impact on the climate, saying it has ‘the lowest carbon footprint in the world’.

Farmers can now apply from a £27 million pot to adopt new technology and invest in productivity-boosting equipment as the Farming Investment Fund opens from today.

Farmers and growers in England are being urged by the government to apply for grants to buy new equipment to help the industry become more sustainable.

This could include solar powered electric fences, water treatment systems that use ultraviolet light rather than chemicals and cameras for monitoring livestock.

Eliminating world hunger by the end of the decade requires urgent action and innovative solutions to the way we produce, distribute and consume food, Qu Dongyu, the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said today in a message to the UN's Climate Change Conference (COP26).

The number of undernourished people rose to 811 million last year, and the climate crisis is just another major driver of malnutrition and poverty along with conflict and other humanitarian emergencies. The COVID-19 pandemic has extended the list, pushing the achievement of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals further away.

"If we want to meet our global commitments to end world hunger by 2030, we need to accelerate the transformation to greener, more inclusive, resilient, efficient and sustainable agri-food systems," Qu said.

The use of antibiotics in UK livestock has fallen again with sales more than halving over the past six years, according to a new report released by the government.

Last year saw another drop in the use of antibiotics in food-producing animals, having reduced by 52% in just six years between 2014 and 2020.

This means that the UK now has one of the lowest levels of antibiotic use in Europe, according to the government’s Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD).

A gene which has profound effects on the production of seeds has been identified by researchers from the John Innes Centre. Gene-editing techniques helped to identify and explain the key gene, ZIP4, in wheat which is responsible for maintaining 50% of yield in this global crop.

The discovery presents an exciting new opportunity to breed high-yield, elite wheat varieties using a novel mutation of the gene, whilst also allowing the introduction of critically important traits such as heat resilience and disease resistance.

Global food prices have reached the highest level in over a decade after increasing by more than 30% in the last year, the United Nations has said.

The Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) Food Price Index, a global barometer, surged to a new peak reaching its highest level since July 2011.

The UN's index highlighted the surging cost of cereals and vegetable oils around the globe, with the latter reaching a record high after soaring by almost 10% last month.

Canada backed a controversial initiative aimed at boosting countries' support for high-tech farming methods designed to reduce emissions and mitigate the impacts of climate change on farms and food on Tuesday.

The Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate (AIM4C) initiative developed by the United States and the United Arab Emirates encourages participating countries and businesses to invest heavily in "climate-smart" agriculture within the next five years. The $4-billion program will foster new scientific breakthroughs through support for public and private agricultural research centres and help farmers access them.

"As stewards of the land, farmers are on the front lines of climate change," said U.S. President Joe Biden, speaking at a closed plenary session at the ongoing COP26 meeting in Glasgow as he formally launched the program. According to its website, the new initiative will work with a "wide range of participants" — including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation — to boost high-tech farming worldwide.