Holistic is a term academics and those on the conference circuit like to toss around when they have no idea how to actually improve things.

Or sometimes it’s just the PR types who write the fluff.

According to a new report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, population growth, agricultural expansion, and the rise of globe-spanning food supply chains have dramatically altered how diseases emerge, jump species boundaries, and spread,

A new, more holistic approach to managing disease threats at the animal-human-environment interface is needed, it argues.

Seventy percent of the new diseases that have emerged in humans over recent decades are of animal origin and, in part, directly related to the human quest for more animal-sourced food, according to the report, World Livestock 2013: Changing Disease Landscapes.

The ongoing expansion of agricultural lands into wild areas, coupled with a worldwide boom in livestock production, means that “livestock and wildlife are more in contact with each other, and we ourselves are more in contact with animals than ever before,” said Ren Wang, FAO Assistant Director-General for Agriculture and Consumer Protection.

“What this means is that we cannot deal with human health, animal health, and ecosystem health in isolation from each other – we have to look at them together, and address the drivers of disease emergence, persistence and spread, rather than simply fighting back against diseases after they emerge,” he added.

FAO’s new study focuses in particular on how changes in the way humans raise and trade animals have affected how disease emerge and spread.

“In response to human population growth, income increases and urbanization, world food and agriculture has shifted its main focus from the supply of cereals as staples to providing an increasingly protein-rich diet based on livestock and fishery products,” World Livestock 2013 notes.

While livestock production provides a number of economic and nutrition benefits, the sector’s rapid growth has spawned a number of health-related challenges, it says.

The risk of animal-to-human pathogen shifts varies greatly according to the type of livestock production and the presence of basic infrastructure and services.

While intensive production systems are largely free from high-impact animal and zoonotic diseases, they do present some pitfalls, particularly in developing countries and countries in transition, according to the report.

The report also states, however, that disease emergence in livestock is not specific to large-scale, intensive systems.

Smallholder livestock systems – which tend to involve animals roaming freely over large areas, but still in relatively high densities – often facilitate the disease spread, both among local animal populations and over broad distances.