Livestock
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"If you took all the people in the world and put them on a large set of scales, their combined mass would be about 300 million tons. If you then took all our domesticated farm animals—cows, pigs, sheep and chickens—and placed them on an even larger set of scales, their mass would amount to about 700 million tons. In contrast, the combined mass of all surviving large wild animals — from porcupines and penguins to elephants and whales—is less than 100 million tons." --Yuval Noah Harari, cited in [1] see Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow |
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Livestock are domesticated animals raised in an agricultural setting to produce labor and commodities such as meat, eggs, milk, fur, leather, and wool. The term is sometimes used to refer solely to those that are bred for consumption, while other times it refers only to farmed ruminants, such as cattle and goats.
In recent years, some organizations have also raised livestock to promote the survival of rare breeds. The breeding, maintenance, and slaughter of these animals, known as animal husbandry, is a component of modern agriculture that has been practiced in many cultures since humanity's transition to farming from hunter-gatherer lifestyles.
Animal husbandry practices have varied widely across cultures and time periods. Originally, livestock were not confined by fences or enclosures, but these practices have largely shifted to intensive animal farming, sometimes referred to as "factory farming". Now, over 99% of livestock are raised on factory farms. These practices increase yield of the various commercial outputs, but have also led to negative impacts on animal welfare and the environment. Livestock production continues to play a major economic and cultural role in numerous rural communities.
See also
- Agribusiness
- Agroecology
- Amenable species
- Aquaculture
- Beekeeping
- Bovine spongiform encephalopathy
- California Proposition 2 (2008)
- Cryoconservation of animal genetic resources
- Cuniculture (rabbit farming)
- Environmental effects of meat production
- Fur farming
- Leave the gate as you found it
- Livestock's Long Shadow - Environmental Issues and Options (UN report)
- Pen
- Ranching
- Sericulture (silkworm farming)
- Sheep husbandry
- Western Fair
- Wildlife farming
