Sustainability Task Force

Presently, The Sustainability Task Force is no more active being dismissed in 2023 having completed its mandate, i.e. the preparation of the ICAR Guidelines, Section 22

The purpose of ICAR sustainability traits was to provide a harmonized approach to assess the sustainability of dairy herds. By providing a common definition of these traits, it encouraged organisations that are involved in milk recording, breeding or any other way of data recording in dairy herds to develop tools to support farmers to increase the sustainability of their dairy herd.

The traits have been selected and defined by a group of ICAR related experts. The group has made the choice not to come up with an ICAR sustainability index, but to let the user make a choice which traits to include in their own sustainability index. A selection of traits can be used to create an index that fits the data available and the specific circumstances in your organization or your country.

ICAR sustainability traits were selected in such a way that they cover the most important aspects of the performance of the herd regarding sustainability. The traits have been defined in a way that they generally reflect a period of a year. So, they do reflect the performance of the herd during a longer period.

The list contains several categories of traits:

1. Feeding and production
2. Fertility
3. Health
4. Longevity and culling
5. Young stock

The list of sustainability traits can be found below as short list with just the name and category and as detailed list with the definitions of the traits. Different colours are used to distinguish the different categories, these colours have no particular meaning.

We recommend users of this list of traits to select one or more traits per category and to combine these traits into a sustainability index suitable to their national system. The weight per trait could be determined by each user. The sustainability index could be made available to members of your organization to support the sustainability of their herd or to proof sustainability or product quality to e.g. dairy processors.

List to ICAR sustainability traits