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In recent years the term ‘nature-positive food systems’ has gained attention. Attention has evolved from global advocacy about the reciprocal relationship of food systems with nature towards really rethinking these systems based on these relations. The term, however, leaves room for interpretation, and a blurred understanding of the concept may undermine meaningful steps towards required change. Therefore we here explored how "nature-positive food systems" could be meaningfully defined, in a way that is beneficial for nature-positive transitions. To do so, we formulated a working definition, based on literature and internal discussions, acknowledging that defining nature-positive food systems is contextual and a process in which increasing shared understanding is the aim, not obtaining a final definition. As working definition, we refer to nature-positive food systems as food systems that have nature at the heart of decision-making and that will lead to increased biodiversity and improved ecosystem functioning through collective understanding and action. It is important to acknowledge that also nature-positive food systems need to provide sufficient and healthy food for people. The definition reflects five building blocks: “nature”, “positive”, “food systems”, “nature at the heart” and “collective understanding and action”. These reflect different components of the term “nature-positive food systems” and elements that were frequently mentioned in existing definitions of “nature-positive”. The five building blocks are explained in this report, referring to discussions in the literature and internally that have led to the working definition.

The last few years the term ‘Nature Positive Food Systems’ has gained attention as a result of global advocacy to rethink our food systems and the reciprocal relationship with nature. The food system is both impacting nature and benefiting from nature, and therefore key in achieving nature-positive ambitions. Most crucially the idea of ‘Nature Positive’ reflects the increasing global consensus on the ambition to not only halt biodiversity and ecosystem decline, but reverse the destruction of nature and regenerating nature. Moreover, the concept of ‘Nature Positive’ is not just about numbers, it is all about a different look: a positive look on nature and its interaction with the systems that feed us. The significant move from reducing harm to regenerating nature, raises the question if Food Systems can contribute and become nature positive themselves.The concept of ‘Nature Positive Food Systems’ consists of two elements: ‘nature positive’ and ‘food systems’.Food systems as the whole complex range from activities from farm to fork. In the food system approach the food system activities are already placed in between social and environmental drivers, addressing the functionalrelationships and interdependencies. If we define nature in its broadest sense, as often implied, this represents the environment in the food system approach: the external world in its entirety. It is not just about plants and animals, about habitats; it is also about soil, water and functioning ecosystems in all its diversity. Therefore, biodiversity and ecosystem functioning are often used as an indicator for the state of nature.The figures are clearly pointing out the nature is under pressure. There is no single cause but most are involving human decision-making and are reflective of the human-nature relationship. Many of our key systems heavilydepend on the benefits of nature, which have been deteriorating over time. To this end, it is also clear that urgent action is required since reversal an

Individual activity is related to the health, welfare and performance of broilers. In previous work using a radio frequency identification system, we were able to collect individual activity data over time, and activity was found to be heritable. The aim of the current study was to estimate genetic parameters for activity while taking into account the effect of age. Therefore, two repeated measurement models were fitted. The model with an intercept and slope forgenetic and permanent environmental effect, and a heterogeneous residual variance, yielded the best goodness-of-fit. First results showed that daily heritability varied between 7 and 30%. The heritability was lowest at the start and at the end of the production life. This study shows potential for selection on activity in broilers. Furthermore, this study shows that activity patterns (in time) can be changed, as both the intercept and slope of activity are heritable.

Individual broiler behaviour could serve as a proxy for an individual’s health, welfare and performance. However, large-scale individual behaviour recording is difficult. Wearable and remote sensors have both been investigated to record individual broiler behaviour. In this study, we validated the use of automated tracking using video or radio frequency identification (RFID) by comparing the total estimated walking distance to ground-truth annotated from video. By using colour-marked birds we simplified the computer vision task of YOLOv5. The estimated walking distances by video pixel-based closely matched ground-truth pixel-based (≤2 cm difference). Overall, the RFID-system also closely matched ground-truth pixel-based, except for one movement event (75 cm underestimation). Over the entire duration of the trial, RFID and video gave similar animal rankings, but RFID seems more error prone due to missing reads. RFID is suitable to track broilers over time, but video could be more accurate and practical for on-farm application.

Animal behaviour is complex and comparing average levels of behavioural activities is sometimes insufficient to pick up on behavioural differences between (groups of) animals. Entropy, a measure of the randomness or regularity of time series, might help us to describe aspects of behaviour better. In this study, we determined daily entropy in individual broiler activity levels over time, based on a time series of observed activity per 15 minutes across a day, to assess individual variation and consistency in entropy of activity. Activity data for calculation of entropy were available for 79 broilers for a maximum of 21 days. We observed individual variation in entropy between broilers, but the level of entropy was not very consistent across days. The individual variation in entropy indicates potential for future research to look into whether and how entropy differences relate to other traits in broilers.

Societal and ethical issues addressed in animal breeding studies from 1990 onwards were examined by means of a bibliometric analysis. Using a specific set of search terms in Scopus, 673 publications of potential interest for societal aspects of animal breeding were found. Subsequent manual selection resulted in 270 relevant studies. Across the period from 1990 to the present, the number of publications addressing societal or ethical aspects of animal breeding, mainly focussing on animal welfare and behaviour or genetic modification, increased from the year 2000 and peaked around 2010. Of the 270 publications, 24% explicitly mentioned ethics, mainly in relation to genetic modification, biotechnology or animal welfare/behaviour. The minority of the publications (32%) were experimental studies. To conclude, only a minor part of publications on animal breeding explicitly address societal issues and, of these, the minority explicitly addresses ethics.

A bibliometric analysis was performed to explore to what degree published animal breeding studies (on cattle, pigs and poultry) explicitly address societal issues and ethics, and what themes were addressed. A combination of search terms in Scopus resulted in about 24,500 publications on farm animal breeding since 1990, of which 673 included a society- or ethics-related term. A two-person manual second (on titles) and third (on the title, key words and abstract) selection step reduced the number to 270 papers that met our criteria, so overall, about 1% of the identified published animal breeding studies explicitly refers to themes being a societal issue in the title, key words or abstract. The number of papers per publication year increased rapidly after the year 2001, and peaked around 2010. Animal welfare and behaviour (AW) was the trait that was addressed most, especially for poultry, and to a lesser extent also for pigs and cattle. Explicit reference to ethics was made in 65 (24%) of the 270 selected papers. In this ‘explicit on ethics’ subset, the themes genetic modification (GM), biotechnology (BT) and AW were dominant. The subset of studies on GM that explicitly mentioned ethics was assessed in more detail, to examine how, and to what extent, the topic of ethics was discussed, and whether specific actions were mentioned. The inclusion of ethics in these publications varied along a broad spectrum, ranging from ethics only being mentioned as being relevant to ethics being the main topic of the paper. Several studies called upon different stakeholders to take action, mainly in terms of actively taking part in discussions. This study concludes that: (1) the human eye/brain seems to be necessary to select on criteria in a bibliometric study like the present – the visual inspection removed about 60% of the ‘hits’ for being false positive; (2) animal breeding work on AW issues seems to be more prone to use wording that is explicit on societal issues compared to breed

In de Noordzee wordt jaarlijks een grote hoeveelheid zand gewonnen om de Nederlandse kust door middel van suppleties te beschermen tegen overstroming. Voor het winnen van het zand is een vergunning nodig in het kader van de Ontgrondingenwet. MERs dienen ter onderbouwing van vergunningaanvragen. Ten behoeve van het MEP Winning Suppletiezand 2013 – 2017 hebben Rijkswaterstaat, Stichting LaMer en het Hoogheemraadschap Hollands Noorderkwartier aan IMARES gevraagd een inventarisatie te maken van lopende onderzoeks- en monitoringprojecten waarvan de uitkomsten relevant kunnen zijn voor de invulling van het MEP. Indien gesignaleerde kennisleemtes al in andere projecten worden ingevuld kan het MEP zandwinning zich beter richten op kennislacunes die nog niet geadresseerd worden in andere studies. Ook kan samenwerking gezocht worden met andere studies op basis van de inventarisatie.

Background Mucin Muc2 is the structural component of the intestinal mucus layer. Absence of Muc2 leads to loss of this layer allowing direct bacterial-epithelial interactions. We hypothesized that absence of the mucus layer leads to increased expression of innate defense peptides. Specifically, we aimed to study the consequence of Muc2 deficiency (Muc2-/-) on the expression of regenerating islet-derived protein 3 beta (Reg3ß), regenerating islet-derived protein 3 gamma (Reg3¿), and angiogenin-4 (Ang4) in the intestine shortly before and after weaning. Methods Intestinal tissues of Muc2-/- and wild-type (WT) mice were collected at postnatal day 14 (P14, i.e. pre-weaning) and P28 (i.e. post-weaning). Reg3ß, Reg3¿, and Ang4 expression was studied by quantitative real-time PCR, Western-blot, in situ hybridization, and immunohistochemistry. Results Reg3ß and Reg3¿ were expressed by diverging epithelial cell types; namely enterocytes, Paneth cells, and goblet cells. Additionally, Ang4 expression was confined to Paneth cells and goblet cells. Expression of Reg3ß, Reg3¿, and Ang4 differed between WT and Muc2-/- mice before and after weaning. Interestingly, absence of Muc2 strongly increased Reg3ß and Reg3¿ expression in the small intestine and colon. Finally, morphological signs of colitis were only observed in the distal colon of Muc2-/- mice at P28, where and when expression levels of Reg3ß, Reg3¿, and Ang4 were the lowest. Conclusions Expression of Reg3 proteins and Ang4 by goblet cells point to an important role for goblet cells in innate defense. Absence of Muc2 results in up-regulation of Reg3ß and Reg3¿ expression, suggesting altered bacterial-epithelial signaling and an innate defense response in Muc2-/- mice. The inverse correlation between colitis development and Reg3ß, Reg3¿, and Ang4 expression levels might point toward a role for these innate defense peptides in regulating intestinal inflammation