Livestock Intensification: Focusing on Animal Welfare Improvements

Dear Colleagues,

Livestock intensification systems have long been used to raise a large number of animals using less space. The goal has been to produce more animal products for a growing population. Although these systems have many benefits, such as the ability to manage a larger number of animals with less labor, increased biosecurity, and environmental control, among other advantages, they can negatively affect animal welfare. Intensification systems prevent animals from performing innate behaviors that they would perform in their natural environment and expose them to social stressors normally not encounter in the wild, leading to stress. Stress negatively affects the behavior, physiology, and performance of animals. Furthermore, production animals undergo painful and stressful procedures (such castration, tail docking, ear tagging, disbudding, vaccination, and treatments) to prevent aggression and promote growth and meat quality, among other reasons. Thus, finding novel methods to mitigate the stress associated with barren environments/social stress/painful/stressful procedures/handling, the development of technologies such as precision livestock technologies to identify deviations in animal behavior/health, better worker training programs, and other science-based approaches to improve animal welfare on-farm are critically needed. The purpose of this Special Issue is to expand the knowledge of alternative and improved methods to promote a better quality of life for animals raised in intensification systems. Finally, this issue will incorporate what livestock farm design criteria ought to be included in the farm of the future that accommodates both high productivity and optimum welfare.

Dr. Arlene Garcia
Prof. Dr. John J. McGlone
Guest Editors

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• livestock intensification
• animal welfare
• stress
• pain
• livestock farm design