Livestock in the Bioeconomy: are EU policies coherent

A shift towards a bioeconomy is a strategy put forward by the European Union (EU) to address climate change, the use of non-renewable resources, and food and nutrition security. As a result, biomass will become an increasingly important resource in the bioeconomy and will require careful and sustainable management. Managing biomass sustainably will be challenging, however, as biomass comes from a wide variety of economic sectors and these sectors are governed by different policies. The bioeconomy will therefore require coherence between different policy domains as competition for biomass for food, feed and bioenergy increases. The aim of this study was to i) assess the goals of EU policies related to the bioeconomy and check if they are coherent i.e. reinforce or contradict each other, and ii) address what this will mean for livestock in terms of land use for feed production, and more generally for the production of animal sourced food. We conducted a qualitative content analysis of 41 EU policy documents across 9 policy domains, such as agriculture, environment, fisheries and forestry. We use established policy coherence assessment methods to explore the interactions i.e. trade-offs and synergies that policies induce. For example, the EU’s current proposals for biofuels is at odds with its intentions to have more domestic feed. We conclude that a shift towards a bioeconomy requires addressing the interactions between different policy goals across the different sectors. This can be achieved through more integrated policies such as a dedicated EU food policy similar to the EU’s energy policy.