Vol. 70 No. 1 (2020): Evolution in animal husbandry – Fitting animals or fitting systems?

Tail docking, disbudding, beak trimming or castration – all these mutilations aim to fit animals into highly efficient farming systems. Reasons are safety of farm workers, avoiding injuries of livestock, keeping the quality of the final product and eventually achieving profitability. Surgical interventions seem to be particularly cruel and not acceptable to a society that takes animal rights more and more into account. But what about fitting procedures that are not as obvious, like cow calf separation immediately after birth or the use of genetic scissors instead of real ones? For society’s trust in future animal husbandry and proud identification of farmers with their livestock systems scientific answers and discussions to derive concepts are needed. With this issue of Landbauforschung we intend to stimulate a controversial discussion of this far reaching topic.

This issue was published by the Thünen-Institut under former Editor-in-Chief Hans Marten Paulsen.