PLF and Sustainability, Ethics and Societal Impacts

Precision livestock farming is a new concept that has great potential to transform livestock farming by introducing a degree of management control over the component processes that was previously impossible. An essential difference from the former husbandry is the scale of the modern livestock farm. However, new farming technologies may have a much wider impact on society than the immediate consequences for farmers and their livestock; this impact can be evaluated objectively using different methods for ethical assessment. Precision livestock farming can be defined as the management of livestock production using the principles and technology of process engineering.Today the livestock sector and the decision of the future technology (e.g. PLF) are confronted with the task to take into account an enormous amount of issues, normative, economic, technological and social. On the normative side are many societal pressures to consider animal welfare, environmental issues (agro biodiversity, clean water), landscape and health.
Economically, farmers have lots of problems to earn some profit; from the technological side, farmers are pressured to participate in the dynamics of technology and innovation. Moreover, farmers want to have good working conditions.