Pastoral Farming Ethics and Economics–Aligning Grazing Practices and Expectations

Fisher, M. W.

doi:10.3389/fvets.2020.00209

Cited by 8 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…Maintaining profitability is a challenge for any business, as decreasing returns and increasing costs squeeze profits, especially in a sector that in certain parts of the world; for example, Europe relies heavily on subsidy. This can lead to larger operations benefiting from economies of scale evident in larger farms, flocks and herd sizes (Fisher 2020). Expansion is also seen as a welfare risk, such as a lack of investment in farm infrastructure required to improve D welfare as farm sizes increase (Shortall 2019).…”

Section: Animal Welfare Of Grazing Ruminants and Its Relationship Wit...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One option to overcome this lack of incentive is labelling products (e.g. 'Milk from Happy Cows', 'Pasture for life') from preferred animal welfare-friendly systems, which would enable motivated consumers to support them (Fisher 2020). Nevertheless, this premium price for labelled products may not compensate fully for the increased costs associated with delivering the required animal welfare standards; for example, additional labour, a lower annual milk yield per cow, use of additional straw, large grazing area and, therefore, less area for on-farm feed production (Oudshoorn et al 2011).…”

Section: Animal Welfare Of Grazing Ruminants and Its Relationship Wit...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As concluded by Dawkins (2017), the potential conflicts between animal welfare and efficient farming can often be resolved or at least reduced by showing the financial benefits that improving animal welfare can bring via: (1) reduced mortality; (2) improved health; (3) improved product quality; (4) improved disease resistance and reduced medication; (5) lower risk of zoonoses and foodborne diseases; (6) farmer job satisfaction and contributions to Corporate Social Responsibility; and (7) the ability to command higher prices from consumers. However, higher animal welfare standards often come at a greater financial cost to the farm system (Fisher 2020). Some may be one-time costs associated with changing infrastructure and switching practices, some may be ongoing operational costs, and some may be costs to which all businesses in an industry must contribute indirectly (Fernandes et al 2021).…”

Section: Animal Welfare Of Grazing Ruminants and Its Relationship Wit...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Therefore, is society, by influencing animal welfare standards, at risk of disregarding the invaluable perspectives of those husbanding animals, who are best placed to understand the animals in their care, and their societal need? (Fisher 2020). Animal welfare is a natural process that needs to be expressed as well as possible to develop sustainable, efficient farming practices that will allow the farmer to feel their work is valued (Peyraud and Mirabito 2019).…”

Section: Animal Welfare Of Grazing Ruminants and Its Relationship Wit...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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A perspective on animal welfare of grazing ruminants and its relationship with sustainability

Rivero

Lee

2022

Anim. Prod. Sci.

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Sustainability is a complex theorem driven through the optimisation of interconnected economic, social and environmental parameters. Balancing trade-offs between these three parameters is used to define a sustainable system, and while economic and, to a degree, environmental parameters can be numericised, making optimisation more defined, social parameters are often more complex. In livestock systems, animal welfare is held as a central pillar of sustainability, but due to its complex nature, indicators of welfare are in practice often restricted to negative nutritional/environmental/ health domains (e.g. poor food quality, injuries/diseases) rather than the wider more complex 'behavioural' or 'mental state' domain indicators (e.g. expression of rewarding behaviours). This perspective discusses the potential synergies and trade-offs between animal welfare and economic, societal and environmental pillars of sustainability for grazing ruminant systems. Grazing is often considered more animal welfare-friendly than housed or feedlot type systems, especially in relation to the behavioural and mental state domains (BMSD) within a more 'natural' environment, as it may provide a positive experience to the animal. However, the welfare status of grazing ruminants can differ with factors such as management practices and environmental conditions greatly influencing nutritional/environmental/health domains of welfare, where a more 'controlled environment' can be efficacious. Animals that are not maintained at a good level of welfare will not express their productive potential, although improving welfare standards may lead to higher costs of production and therefore an economic break, as a critical component of sustainability, is often applied to what can be achieved on farm. Increasing animal performance is seen as an effective approach to reducing emissions intensity, which has been borne out by the lower methane intensity of high-yielding dairy housed herds, although there are important ethical concerns regarding BMSD of animal welfare and the marked restriction in environmental choices and in foraging behaviour (negative effect on behavioural interactions). However, consumers need to understand that implementing more 'natural' production systems with higher animal welfare standards can incur extra costs for producers, leading to higher output prices and also higher emissions per unit of product, which will require a reduction in consumption to reduce overall emissions.

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Section: Animal Welfare Of Grazing Ruminants and Its Relationship Wit...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Animal Welfare Of Grazing Ruminants and Its Relationship Wit...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Animal Welfare Of Grazing Ruminants and Its Relationship Wit...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Animal Welfare Of Grazing Ruminants and Its Relationship Wit...mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

A perspective on animal welfare of grazing ruminants and its relationship with sustainability

Rivero

Lee

2022

Anim. Prod. Sci.

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“…This responsibility is shared with politicians and government advisors, scientists, and the lay public, who decide what is socially acceptable, in terms of animal care and use. Fisher suggests that by placing the responsibilities for overseeing animal welfare solely on veterinarians and scientists, the relevance of animal welfare as a social construct is ignored [57]. The initial advances in animal welfare protection and legislation were driven by societal ethical concerns regarding animal suffering caused by humans.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Applied Animal Ethics in Industrial Food Animal Production: Exploring the Role of the Veterinarian

Trujillo

Llonch

Turner

2022

Animals

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Industrial food animal production practices are efficient for producing large quantities of milk, meat, and eggs for a growing global population, but often result in the need to alter animals to fit a more restricted environment, as well as creating new animal welfare and health problems related to animal confinement in high densities. These practices and methods have become normalized, to the extent that veterinarians and others embedded in these industries rarely question the ethical challenges associated with raising animals in this fashion. Moral ‘lock-in’ is common with those working in food animal industries, as is the feeling that it is impossible to effect meaningful change. Animal welfare issues associated with the industrialization of food animal production are ‘wicked problems’ that require a multi- and transdisciplinary approach. We argue that veterinarians, as expert animal health and welfare advocates, should be critical stakeholders and leaders in discussions with producers and the food animal sector, to look for innovative solutions and technology that will address current and future global sustainability and food security needs. Solutions will necessarily be different in different countries and regions, but ethical issues associated with industrial food animal production practices are universal.

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Cattle identification based on multiple feature decision layer fusion

Li,

et al. 2024

Sci Rep

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In farming scenarios, cattle identification has become a key issue for the development of precision farming. In precision livestock farming, single-feature recognition methods are prone to misjudgment in complex scenarios involving multiple cattle obscuring each other during drinking and feeding. This paper proposes a decision-level identification method based on the multi-feature fusion of cattle faces, muzzle patterns, and ear tags. The method utilizes the SOLO algorithm to segment images and employs the FaceNet and PP-OCRv4 networks to extract features for the cattle’s faces, muzzle patterns, and ear tags. These features are compared with the Ground truth, from which the Top 3 features are extracted. The corresponding cattle IDs of these features are then processed using One-Hot encoding to serve as the final input for the decision layer, and various ensemble strategies are used to optimize the model. The results show that using the multimodal decision fusion method makes the recognition accuracy reach 95.74%, 1.4% higher than the traditional optimal unimodal recognition accuracy. The verification rate reaches 94.72%, 10.65% higher than the traditional optimal unimodal recognition verification rate. The research results demonstrate that the multi-feature fusion recognition method has significant advantages in drinking and feeding farm environments, providing an efficient and reliable solution for precise identification and management of cattle in farms and significantly improving recognition accuracy and stability.

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Pastoral Farming Ethics and Economics–Aligning Grazing Practices and Expectations

Cited by 8 publications

References 56 publications

A perspective on animal welfare of grazing ruminants and its relationship with sustainability

A perspective on animal welfare of grazing ruminants and its relationship with sustainability

Applied Animal Ethics in Industrial Food Animal Production: Exploring the Role of the Veterinarian

Cattle identification based on multiple feature decision layer fusion

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