Smart Animal Production

This new book series wishes to contribute to the discussion by looking at various aspects of modern livestock production. This includes the acceptability of how this is done in relation to the ethics and animal welfare, the practicality of the role of technology and the economics of animal-based food production.

The increasing demand for cheap animal products, for higher animal welfare and healthier animals while heavily reducing environmental load and energy use with an ever smaller suitable workforce is putting livestock farming world-wide under pressure. Previous research has shown that modern technology has a high potential to address these issues by using sensors and sensing systems to automatically capture quantitative information directly from the animal; this is referred to as Precision Livestock Farming (PLF).

However, it has also been shown that important issues remain to be solved: (i) lack of cooperation between animal scientists, veterinarians, bio- and other engineers and economists, (ii) lack of implementable systems which relate sensors, image and sound analysis to key indicators on farms, (iii) lack of understanding how PLF creates value for the different stakeholders and (iv) suitable business models to further adoption of PLF. Furthermore, the divide between consumer understanding and the reality of modern livestock production is widening with the urbanisation of the population and the increased use of intensive farming systems.