Newcastle University

The School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development (AFRD) is the UK’s leading institution for education and research into pig and poultry systems, and was selected by the British Pig Executive as the Centre for National Pig Development Research. The School has a long tradition of nutritional and husbandry research in the above systems, and a worldwide reputation in the mathematical modelling of biological processes of pigs and poultry. More recently the latter models have been expanded to account for the quantification of the environmental impact of these systems, through their development into Life Cycle Assessment models. UNEW also has a strong tradition of conducting applied social science research into the externalities associated with food production. Particular research strengths are in the evaluation of externality costs and benefits and in investigating the responses of farmers and consumers to instruments designed to manage the production of externalities. The University-wide Newcastle Institute for Research in Sustainability (NiReS) enables this research to be put into the context of sustainability.