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
Composition
| Tone Roalkvam (Chair) – Specialist Advisor Sustainability at Tine S, ICAR Board Member | Norway |
| Martin Burke (Secretary) | ICAR (Secretary) |
| Fabian Bernal – Global Head of Sustainability DeLaval Group | Sweden |
| Christa Egger Danner – Chair ICAR Functional Traits Working Group | Austria |
| Robert Fourdraine – Asst Director, Dairy Record Management Systems | USA |
| Birgit Grendl-Gredler – Co-Chair ICAR ‘Feed and Gas’ Working Group | Holland |
| René van der Linde – Technical Projects Coordinator, ICAR | The Netherlands |
| Débora Santschi – Director of innovation and development, Lactanet | Canada |
Documents
Introduction to ICAR sustainability traits
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:
- Feeding and production
- Fertility
- Health
- Longevity and culling
- 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
| Number | Trait | Category |
| 1 | Age at slaughter (beef cattle) | Feeding and Production |
| 2 | Average days in milk | Feeding and Production |
| 3 | Body weight | Feeding and Production |
| 4 | Daily gain | Feeding and Production |
| 5 | Dry Matter Intake | Feeding and Production |
| 6 | Energy corrected milk | Feeding and Production |
| 7 | Feed efficiency | Feeding and Production |
| 8 | Methane Emissions | Feeding and Production |
| 9 | MUN /Urea rates in milk | Feeding and Production |
| 10 | Percentage of cows with functional BCS | Feeding and Production |
| 11 | Apparent pregnancy loss rate | Fertility |
| 12 | Average days open | Fertility |
| 13 | Average calving interval | Fertility |
| 14a | Non-return rate 56 days | Fertility |
| 14b | 1st service conception rate | Fertility |
| 15 | Pregnancy rate | Fertility |
| 16 | Percentage of cows culled due to reproductive problems | Fertility |
| 17 | Percentage of cows with fertility disorders | Fertility |
| 18 | Average somatic cell count | Health |
| 19 | Chronic infection rate | Health |
| 20 | Dry cow cure rate | Health |
| 21 | Fresh cow infection rate | Health |
| 22 | Selective dry cow therapy rate | Health |
| 23 | Percentage of cows culled due to udder health | Health |
| 24 | Percentage of cows culled due to lameness | Health |
| 25 | Percentage of cows culled due to other disorders/diseases | Health |
| 26 | Percentage of cows with FPR < 1 at first test day | Health |
| 27 | Percentage of cws with FPR >1.3/1.5 at first test day | Health |
| 28 | Percentage of cows with lameness | Health |
| 29 | Percentage of cows with mastitis | Health |
| 30 | Percentage of cows with subclinical metabolic issue | Health |
| 31 | Age at culling (dairy cattle) | Longevity |
| 32 | Average daily production of culled animals | Longevity |
| 33 | Average lactation number | Longevity |
| 34 | Average lifetime production of culled animals | Longevity |
| 35 | Percentage of cows died ≤ 60 days in milk | Longevity |
| 36 | Age at first calving | Young stock |
| 37 | Young stock EBV ranking | Young stock |
| 38 | Young stock sire EBV ranking | Young stock |
| 39 | Percentage of female young stock involuntary culled | Young stock |
| 40 | Percentage of calves born dead | Young stock |
| 41 | Percentage of female calves with diarrhea | Young stock |
| 42 | Percentage of female calves with respiratory diseases | Young stock |
| 43 | Percentage of mortality of female calves until 90 days | Young stock |
List of definitions of traits to assess sustainability at herd level
A detailed list of the definitions of traits to assess sustainability at herd level is available here
Examples of sustainability indexes of ICAR members
An example of Sustainability Index, implemented by Lactanet (Canada), is available here