Food ontologies for sustainability: the case of meat systems

Background: The sustainability of food systems, especially of those sourcing and supplying meat, is a major global concern, due to their significant contribution to negative outcomes such as global warming, air and water pollution, and outbreaks of zoonosis. Ontologies are essential to effectively address those issues, by standardizing knowledge of food systems into consistent vocabularies and structured representations. To date, however, no ontology models sustainable food systems involving meat sourcing and supplying, and only limited and siloed efforts have been made regarding designing ontologies for sustainability in food systems in general. Results: In this paper, we introduce a Sustainable Meat Systems Ontology (SuMSO). SuMSO focuses on bovine-derived meat as an initial use case. In Sect. “Background”, we briefly assess existing ontological resources addressing meat systems and related sustainability, and available ontology design methodologies. In Sect. “Methods”, we outline the approach adopted to develop SuMSO. In Sect. “The Sustainable Meat Systems Ontology”, we describe SuMSO. In Sect. “Discussion”, we discuss limitations of this work and provide considerations regarding ontology applicability. In Sect. “Conclusions”, we conclude by presenting future directions for implementation. Conclusions: SuMSO was designed to be compatible with: the Sustainability Core Ontology (SCO), as a more general sustainability ontology; with Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), as a top-level ontology; with ontologies within the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontology (OBO) Foundry, and with Common Core Ontologies Suites (CCO). SuMSO will support implementations of applications, such as interactive dashboards, to monitor, collect, share, and integrate data on meat systems and sustainability, as well as construct effective catalogs of sustainability Indicators and metrics, ultimately contributing to projects that seek to strengthen sustainability across local and global meat systems.