Helping deliver safe, affordable and sustainable animal protein
Healthier animals are more productive, use less resources, and therefore reduce their impact on the environment.
Meat and seafood farmers use progressive animal health practices and innovative technology to keep animals and fish healthy. Healthier animals help contribute to sustainable agriculture. Merck Animal Health is committed to advancing the health of animals and safeguarding animal and food safety with our vaccines, medicines, and monitoring and traceability technology.
Healthier Animals Help Sustain Our Environment
For generations, farmers and ranchers have utilized sustainable agricultural practices to reduce their environmental impact and use of natural resources while producing more sustainable meat and sustainable seafood to feed a growing global population. By using progressive animal health practices and today’s most innovative health-monitoring technologies, they keep animals healthy – and healthy animals produce less emissions, require fewer resources to raise and produce more food.
Hormone Implants Help Farmers and Ranchers Raise Beef Sustainably
Safe for Humans and Animals
Hormone implants are a sustainable agricultural practice that help reduce beef’s environmental footprint. They support beef production efficiency by helping cattle convert the feed they eat into beef allowing cattle to be finished earlier and requiring less time on feed and fewer resources per pound of meat produced. This enables cattle ranchers to raise more beef with fewer animals. Hormone implants are safe for humans and animals and are regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Producer Panel: Sustainability in Beef Production
Sustainable meat production is possible. Hear from cattle producers as they share how they’re improving the sustainability of beef cattle production within their operations. Read about the role of animal health in their sustainability plans and the advice they have for other producers.
Written by Jessica Finck, Ph.D., Merck Animal Health
Sustainable Agriculture Insights
Fast Facts: Sustainable Food Production
Healthier animals help sustain our environment1. Farmers and ranchers use progressive animal health practices and innovative health monitoring technologies to keep animals healthy while contributing to sustainability in agriculture.
Healthy animals contribute to sustainable agriculture by producing more food and less emissions. Research by Oxford Analytica demonstrates the environmental benefits of reducing animal disease and found that for every two cattle vaccinated to prevent disease, one less person goes hungry1.
Sustainable agricultural practices include vaccines – one important tool that helps protect animals from disease. Paired with new precision animal health technologies, positive health and welfare outcomes are achieved more quickly. Healthier animals help sustain our environment
1Oxford Analytica. Animal Health and Sustainability A Global Data Analysis — Summary. A Report Produced for HealthforAnimals. April 18, 2023. https://www.healthforanimals.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/AH-and-Sustainability-Report-Summary.pdf. Retrieved May 8, 2025.