This Special Issue presents a collection of 16 articles extracted from the conference proceedings of the 2nd U.S. Precision Livestock Farming Conference in Knoxville, TN, held May 21–24, 2023. These articles cover a broad range of topics, including sensors and sensing in PLF, data management and algorithm development, the measuring, modeling, and managing of dynamic responses, and the societal impacts of PLF. With their diverse subject matter, these articles serve as an invaluable resource for an array of readers, including researchers, extension practitioners, producers, legislators, manufacturers, and beyond. By delving into the latest advancements in precision livestock farming, readers can gain a deeper understanding of emerging trends and foster collaborations that drive progress within the field. We extend our heartfelt appreciation to the authors who have made significant contributions to this Special Issue.

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Growing public interest in animal welfare issues in recent decades has prompted increased attention to the efforts to develop alternative, nonanimal methods for use in biomedical research and product testing. In A History of the Development of Alternatives to Animals in Research and Testing, the first book-length study of the subject, John Parascandola traces the history of the concept of alternatives to the use of animals in research and testing in Britain and the United States from its beginnings until it had become firmly established in the scientific and animal protection communities by the end of the 1980s. This account of the history of alternatives is set within the context of developments within science, animal welfare, and politics. The book covers the key role played by animal welfare advocates in promoting alternatives, the initial resistance to alternatives on the part of many in the scientific community, the opportunity provided by alternatives for compromise and cooperation between these two groups, and the dominance of the “Three Rs”—reduction, refinement, and replacement.

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From a moral perspective, all banking practice and theory can be seen as value driven. Therefore, there will be no such thing as value-neutral banking activities, and the application of Christian ethical and pastoral principles adds insights to the field of banking for all its involved stakeholders. This book contributes to the specific scientific discourse of practical theology, as this typically appears within the subfields of ethics and pastoral studies. Christian ethics and pastoral principles as applied in banking make up a largely neglected area in the wider academic discourse found within practical theology, and the research presented in this book contributes new knowledge to the field, with particular emphasis on banking practice. It is expected that the theories presented herein will be of interest for other scholars, not only within the realm of practical theology, but also in a cross-domain perspective where scholars in a broad field of disciplines may find the research and academic positions of interest. Such academic fields would include economics, finance, business administration, sociology, history, anthropology, and perhaps more. This expectation may not least be derived from the increasing focus on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), as this has emerged over the last decades within the wider business realm in general, whence the world of banking has followed suit. Alongside this development, an emergence of Islamic banking has been seen, which has showed substantial growth and success.

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This eBook is a collection of articles from a Frontiers Research Topic. Frontiers Research Topics are very popular trademarks of the Frontiers Journals Series: they are collections of at least ten articles, all centered on a particular subject. With their unique mix of varied contributions from Original Research to Review Articles, Frontiers Research Topics unify the most influential researchers, the latest key findings and historical advances in a hot research area! Find out more on how to host your own Frontiers Research Topic or contribute to one as an author by contacting the Frontiers Editorial Office: frontiersin.org/about/contact

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This open access book presents recent advances in the pure sciences that are of significance in the quest for alternatives to the use of animals in research and describes a variety of practical applications of the three key guiding principles for the more ethical use of animals in experiments – replacement, reduction, and refinement, collectively known as the 3Rs. Important examples from across the world of implementation of the 3Rs in the testing of cosmetics, chemicals, pesticides, and biologics, including vaccines, are described, with additional information on relevant regulations. The coverage also encompasses emerging approaches to alternative tests and the 3Rs. The book is based on the most informative contributions delivered at the Asian Congress 2016 on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences. It will be of value for those working in R&D, for graduate students, and for educators in various fields, including the pharmaceutical and cosmetic sciences, pharmacology, toxicology, and animal welfare. The free, open access distribution of Alternatives to Animal Testing is enabled by the Creative Commons Attribution license in International version 4: CC BY 4.0.

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This open access book presents recent advances in the pure sciences that are of significance in the quest for alternatives to the use of animals in research and describes a variety of practical applications of the three key guiding principles for the more ethical use of animals in experiments – replacement, reduction, and refinement, collectively known as the 3Rs. Important examples from across the world of implementation of the 3Rs in the testing of cosmetics, chemicals, pesticides, and biologics, including vaccines, are described, with additional information on relevant regulations. The coverage also encompasses emerging approaches to alternative tests and the 3Rs. The book is based on the most informative contributions delivered at the Asian Congress 2016 on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences. It will be of value for those working in R&D, for graduate students, and for educators in various fields, including the pharmaceutical and cosmetic sciences, pharmacology, toxicology, and animal welfare. The free, open access distribution of Alternatives to Animal Testing is enabled by the Creative Commons Attribution license in International version 4: CC BY 4.0.

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Animal death is a complex, uncomfortable, depressing, motivating and sensitive topic. For those scholars participating in Human-Animal Studies, it is – accompanied by the concept of 'life' – the ground upon which their studies commence, whether those studies are historical, archaeological, social, philosophical, or cultural. It is a tough subject to face, but as this volume demonstrates, one at the heart of human–animal relations and human–animal studies scholarship.
This book is made open access as part of the Knowledge Unlatched KU Select 2017: Backlist Collection

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Animal death is a complex, uncomfortable, depressing, motivating and sensitive topic. For those scholars participating in Human-Animal Studies, it is – accompanied by the concept of 'life' – the ground upon which their studies commence, whether those studies are historical, archaeological, social, philosophical, or cultural. It is a tough subject to face, but as this volume demonstrates, one at the heart of human–animal relations and human–animal studies scholarship.
This book is made open access as part of the Knowledge Unlatched KU Select 2017: Backlist Collection

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The externalization of animals’ genetic potential is determined by a number of external factors, of which feeding plays a major role. Animal nourishment is one of the most important levers in ensuring the efficiency of animal production due to both the high share of feed costs in the total cost of products and the influence this has on the growth, reproduction, and health of animals, as well as the quality of products obtained from them. This particular field is one of the most dynamic in the field of husbandry sciences due to the continuous acquisition and use of numerous results obtained from studies on energy metabolism and nutrients, related to the composition of feed and its influence on animal products. This is also due to the great advances made in genetics with the creation of new types of animals with increasing productive potential and different food requirements. The following Special Issue is dedicated to interdisciplinary studies on animal nutrition, physiology, chemistry, biochemistry, genetics, reproduction, and breeding technologies. The articles contained herein cover a wide range of topics related to feed quality, the influence of food on production levels, the quality of production, and their influence on animal health.

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This Special Issue provides a collection of recent research and reviews that investigate many areas of welfare assessment, such as novel approaches and technologies used to evaluate the welfare of farmed, captive, or wild animals. Research in this Special Issue includes welfare assessment related to pilot whales, finishing pigs, commercial turkey flocks, and dairy goats; the use of sensors or wearable technologies, such as heart rate monitors to assess sleep in dairy cows, ear tag sensors, and machine learning to assess commercial pig behaviour; non-invasive measures, such as video monitoring of behaviour, computer vision to analyse video footage of red foxes, remote camera traps of free-roaming wild horses, infrared thermography of effort and sport recovery in sport horses; telomere length and regulatory genes as novel biomarkers of stress in broiler chickens; the effect of environment on growth physiology and behaviour of laboratory rare minnows and housing system on anxiety, stress, fear, and immune function of laying hens; and discussions of natural behaviour in farm animal welfare and maintaining health, welfare, and productivity of commercial pig herds.

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The second volume of the Special Issue entitled “Antimicrobial Prescribing and Stewardship” consists of manuscripts, including original research articles, review articles, and opinion papers regarding antimicrobial stewardship-related topics, including disease-based/organism-based antimicrobial stewardship; the influence of antimicrobial utilization changes on antimicrobial resistance; the impact of antimicrobial stewardship on quality performance measures and patient outcomes; novel antimicrobial stewardship education and training approaches or interventions aimed toward the public and/or healthcare workers; behavioral change approaches to antimicrobial stewardship; collaborative practice agreements in antimicrobial stewardship; antimicrobial stewardship in special populations (e.g., pediatrics, geriatrics, emergency medicine, hematology/oncology); tackling AMR through antimicrobial stewardship in low- and middle-income countries; antimicrobial stewardship for animal health; antimicrobial stewardship in alternative settings (e.g., community practice, long-term care, resource-limited settings, small and rural hospitals); antimicrobial use and stewardship in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic; and global collaborations to tackle AMR through antimicrobial stewardship.

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First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

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This book has resulted from collaborative interactions between academic institutions and animal shelters. It contains a collection of eleven papers (one review and ten research articles) on the behavior of dogs and cats in animal shelters, which can be very challenging environments. The papers focus on stress and behaviors associated with stress; the effectiveness of shelter enrichment programs in reducing stress; the usefulness of shelter behavioral evaluations in predicting behavior and assessing adoptability; and interactions between humans and companion animals. The aim of this book is to provide information that will inform shelter programs and policies, and thereby improve the welfare of shelter animals.

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The welfare of an individual could be severely affected by stressful events. Mainly for this reason, the scientific community is interested in finding specific and quantifiable characteristics which could indicate or predict specific signs of acute or chronic stress exposure. The aim of this reprint is to reflect this interest in the field of companion animal physiology. The authors engaged in publishing this reprint are experts in the multiple mechanisms involved in stress response, including the detection of behavioral and physical signs which can be measured through biological indicators of homeostasis displacement. The editors strongly believe this topic will be of interest not only to researchers in this field, but also to dog trainers, dog shelter workers and veterinary behaviorists.

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Cats and Conservationists is the first multidisciplinary analysis of the heated debate about free-roaming cats. The debate pits conservationists against cat lovers, who disagree both on the ecological damage caused by the cats and the best way to manage them. An impassioned and spirited conflict, it also sheds light on larger questions about how we interpret science, incorporate diverse perspectives, and balance competing values in order to encourage constructive dialogue on contentious social and environmental issues. On one side of the cat debate stand many environmentalists, especially birders and conservation organizations, who believe that outdoor cats seriously threaten native wildlife. On the other side are many animal welfare advocates, who believe that outdoor cats generally do not pose a major ecological threat and that it is possible for cats and wildlife to coexist. They believe that it is possible, mainly through trap-neuter-return projects (TNR), to keep free-roaming cat populations in check without killing large numbers of cats. Careful analysis suggests that there remain important questions about the science on both cat predation and TNR effectiveness. Yet both sides of the conflict insist that the evidence is clear-cut. This false certainty contributes to conflict between conservationists and cat lovers, and obscures common goals that could generate constructive discussions and collaborative efforts among scientists, policymakers, conservationists, and animal welfare advocates. Cats and Conservationists aims to facilitate such collaboration in order to manage outdoor cats and minimize the damage they cause. It also offers models for constructive debates about the public role of science in other polarized public conflicts over science and environmental topics.

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This open access book provides both a broad perspective and a focused examination of cow care as a subject of widespread ethical concern in India, and increasingly in other parts of the world. In the face of what has persisted as a highly charged political issue over cow protection in India, intellectual space must be made to bring the wealth of Indian traditional ethical discourse to bear on the realities of current human-animal relationships, particularly those of humans with cows. Dharma, yoga, and bhakti paradigms serve as starting points for bringing Hindu—particularly Vaishnava Hindu—animal ethics into conversation with contemporary Western animal ethics. The author argues that a culture of bhakti—the inclusive, empathetic practice of spirituality centered in Krishna as the beloved cowherd of Vraja—can complement recently developed ethics-of-care thinking to create a solid basis for sustaining all kinds of cow care communities.

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This open access book provides both a broad perspective and a focused examination of cow care as a subject of widespread ethical concern in India, and increasingly in other parts of the world. In the face of what has persisted as a highly charged political issue over cow protection in India, intellectual space must be made to bring the wealth of Indian traditional ethical discourse to bear on the realities of current human-animal relationships, particularly those of humans with cows. Dharma, yoga, and bhakti paradigms serve as starting points for bringing Hindu—particularly Vaishnava Hindu—animal ethics into conversation with contemporary Western animal ethics. The author argues that a culture of bhakti—the inclusive, empathetic practice of spirituality centered in Krishna as the beloved cowherd of Vraja—can complement recently developed ethics-of-care thinking to create a solid basis for sustaining all kinds of cow care communities.

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The relationship between domestic dogs and humans represents a unique example of an interspecific relationship. For this and other reasons, there has been a substantial increase in research on dogs. This Special Issue entitled “Dog Behaviour, Physiology and Welfare” collects important information ranging from basic to applied ethology, dealing with canine endocrinology (prolactin, vasopressin, thyroid hormones), physiology (visual perception), welfare (in shelters and zoos), as well as the context of working dogs (service dogs, co-therapist dogs, herding dogs) and the dog–wolf comparison. All the papers are open access and can be read at https://www.mdpi.com/journal/animals/special_issues/Dog_Behavior

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This special issue contains 22 papers (20 research articles and two reviews) on dogs interacting with humans in many different environments, including animal shelters, homes, healthcare facilities, other work sites, and outdoor areas. Given these diverse settings, there are papers concerning interactions between people and shelter dogs, pet dogs, therapy dogs, service dogs, working dogs, and free-living dogs. The aim of this special issue is to inform how such interactions affect both canine and human behavior, physiology, and wellbeing. These papers will interest researchers in the field of Human-Animal Interactions (HAI), veterinarians, animal shelter administrators and staff, as well as people training and handling therapy, service, and working dogs.

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Pigs have a strong motivation to explore and root. In conventional pig husbandry systems, this need is difficult to fulfil, unless adequate enrichment materials are provided. This book summarises how enrichment strategies for pigs have evolved over the last few decades in different countries and provides a vast array of possibilities to enhance the exploratory needs of pigs. The role of enrichment material on avoidance of tail biting outbreaks or as an element triggering positive emotions in pigs is also discussed.

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This eBook is a collection of articles from a Frontiers Research Topic. Frontiers Research Topics are very popular trademarks of the Frontiers Journals Series: they are collections of at least ten articles, all centered on a particular subject. With their unique mix of varied contributions from Original Research to Review Articles, Frontiers Research Topics unify the most influential researchers, the latest key findings and historical advances in a hot research area! Find out more on how to host your own Frontiers Research Topic or contribute to one as an author by contacting the Frontiers Editorial Office: frontiersin.org/about/contact

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Most of the 70 billion animals that are farmed in the world are transported at least once in their lives. For improved animal welfare, sustainability, and profitability it is important that everyone involved in the transportation process takes responsibility for doing a good job. This may require legislation and assurance schemes backed up by inspections and driven by consumer awareness and demand. All aspects of the transportation process, including preparation for transport, handling during loading and unloading, handler and driver training, stocking density on the transport container, journey length, and weather have an effect on animal welfare, meat quality, health after transport, and even mortality during transit. These topics are covered in the papers and reviews in this book together with related aspects such as consumer perceptions of animal transport, cleaning of transport coops, and consideration of on-farm slaughter to obviate the need for transport to an abattoir. The book adds to the knowledge of farm animal transport and highlights areas for future research and improved practice.

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Fighting Nature is an insightful analysis of the historical legacy of 19th century colonialism, war, animal acquisition and transportation. This legacy of entrenched beliefs about the human right to exploit other animal species is yet to be defeated. Throughout the 19th century animals were integrated into staged scenarios of confrontation, ranging from lion acts in small cages to large-scale re-enactments of war. Initially presenting a handful of exotic animals, travelling menageries grew to contain multiple species in their thousands. These 19th-century menageriesentrenched beliefs about the human right to exploit nature through war-like practices against other animal species. Animal shows became a stimulus for antisocial behaviour as locals taunted animals, caused fights, and even turned into violent mobs. Human societal problems were difficult to separate from issues of cruelty to animals.

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This reprint presents original research as well as reviews on current food safety issues. A wide range of biological hazards, food commodities and measures to assess, control and manage hazards are covered. With respect to food commodities, meat, milk/dairy and fish/seafood are covered, but also wild game and edible insects. The epidemiology of parasites and pathogenic bacteria (Clostridioides difficile and Listeria monocytogenes) in various food chains is reviewed, as well as the impact of food technology on food safety.

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Dear Colleagues, Zoological institutions contribute a large amount of fundamental and applied knowledge on a diverse array of animal species. Despite this significant contribution, research conducted within zoos or other captive wildlife facilities has historically been skewed toward charismatic mammals, which comprise only a small proportion of the species that are held in captive collections. Modern zoos play an important role in animal welfare, conservation, and environmental education; therefore, this shortfall in knowledge may have large, unseen, and negative impacts on these “forgotten species”. Hypothesis-driven, experimental research plays a key role in filling these knowledge gaps; however, other avenues of data collection exist which may be equally important. These include observational data (collected without experimental interventions), operational data (data collected within the general management activities of a facility), and incidental data (data collected for one purpose which may reveal further important information when explored in more detail). These unpublished datasets may provide fundamental information on species for which comparatively little is known.

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The growth of the global meat industry and the implications for climate change, food insecurity, workers' rights, the treatment of animals, and other issues. Global meat production and consumption have risen sharply and steadily over the past five decades, with per capita meat consumption almost doubling since 1960. The expanding global meat industry, meanwhile, driven by new trade policies and fueled by government subsidies, is dominated by just a few corporate giants. Industrial farming—the intensive production of animals and fish—has spread across the globe. Millions of acres of land are now used for pastures, feed crops, and animal waste reservoirs. Drawing on concrete examples, the contributors to Global Meat explore the implications of the rise of a global meat industry for a range of social and environmental issues, including climate change, clean water supplies, hunger, workers' rights, and the treatment of animals. Three themes emerge from their discussions: the role of government and corporations in shaping the structure of the global meat industry; the paradox of simultaneous rising meat production and greater food insecurity; and the industry's contribution to social and environmental injustice. Contributors address such specific topics as the dramatic increase in pork production and consumption in China; land management by small-scale cattle farmers in the Amazon; the effect on the climate of rising greenhouse gas emissions from cattle raised for meat; and the tensions between economic development and animal welfare. Contributors Conner Bailey, Robert M. Chiles, Celize Christy, Riva C. H. Denny, Carrie Freshour, Philip H. Howard, Elizabeth Ransom, Tom Rudel, Mindi Schneider, Nhuong Tran, Bill Winders

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This book presents cross-discipline studies covering aspects ranging from animal science to social/consumer sciences and psychology, with the aim to collect and disseminate information promoting the continuous enhancement of animal welfare by improving stakeholders’ perception of animal welfare. Although animal welfare is about how the animals perceive the surrounding environment, the actual welfare of the animals is dependent on how the stakeholders perceive and weigh animal welfare. The stakeholders can, either directly (i.e., through stock-people interaction with the animals) or indirectly (e.g., when retailers and consumers are willing to pay more for high welfare animal-based products), affect the way animals are kept and handled.

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The implementation of artificial intelligence (AI), together with robotics, sensors, sensor networks, Internet of Things (IoT), and machine/deep learning modeling, has reached the forefront of research activities, moving towards the goal of increasing the efficiency in a multitude of applications and purposes related to environmental sciences. The development and deployment of AI tools requires specific considerations, approaches, and methodologies for their effective and accurate applications. This Special Issue focused on the applications of AI to environmental systems related to hazard assessment in urban, agriculture, and forestry areas.

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In a number of European countries (e.g., Spain, Italy, France, Portugal, Slovenia, Croatia, Poland), a portion of the pig sector is aimed at the production of traditional and certified products (e.g., PDO—Protected Designation of Origin, PGI—Protected Geographical Indication). Dry-cured ham is probably the most famous traditional pork product; however, typical pork products are produced in (and exported to) many countries worldwide. The meat used for producing these high-quality delicacies needs to be suitable for seasoning and dry-curing, and these characteristics are the result of complex interactions between the animal (breed, genotype, rearing condition, feeding regime, age and weight at slaughter, etc.) and the environment, without disregarding the importance of ethical attributes such as animal welfare and the environmental impact.This Special Issue focuses on all the innovative production strategies for pigs intended for high-quality, typical productions (in term of higher sustainability of the whole production chain, improvement of animal welfare, innovative feeding and farming techniques, reduction in environmental impact, improvement in meat and fat quality, etc.), with emphasis on PDOs, PGIs, and other recognized production schemes, and it is aimed at providing new insights for a wide range of stakeholders from different countries.

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Psychiatrists define cruelty to animals as a psychological problem or personality disorder. Legally, animal cruelty is described by a list of behaviors. In Just a Dog, Arnold Arluke argues that our current constructs of animal cruelty are decontextualized—imposed without regard to the experience of the groups committing the act. Yet those who engage in animal cruelty have their own understandings of their actions and of themselves as actors. In this fascinating book, Arluke probes those understandings and reveals the surprising complexities of our relationships with animals.Just a Dog draws from interviews with more than 250 people, including humane agents who enforce cruelty laws, college students who tell stories of childhood abuse of animals, hoarders who chronically neglect the welfare of many animals, shelter workers who cope with the ethics of euthanizing animals, and public relations experts who use incidents of animal cruelty for fundraising purposes.

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Comfort during resting, half-closed eyes when feeding on highly palatable feed, or vigorous tail wagging when being brushed are some of the positive indicators that can be used to evaluate the quality of the environment in which domestic animals live. This has been a radical shift from the past as, until now, the welfare assessment on farms has meant assessing negative indicators, namely the number of lame animals, presence of lesions, or frequency of agonistic behaviours. However, the latest research confirms that the absence of a problem or of suffering does not necessarily imply that the animals are experiencing a good life and that their level of welfare is high. To guarantee high welfare standards, animals should experience positive conditions that allow them to live a “life worth living”, and positive indicators are needed to identify these conditions. This Special Issue focuses on the development and validation of indicators of positive welfare or on the refinement of the existing ones, as well as on the identification of suitable living conditions for providing positive welfare to farmed and companion animals.

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This book presents the latest advances in applications of continuous, objective, and automated sensing technologies and computer tools for sustainable and efficient poultry production, and it offers solutions to the poultry industry to address challenges in terms of poultry management, the environment, nutrition, automation and robotics, health, welfare assessment, behavior monitoring, waste management, etc. The reader will find original research papers that address, on a global scale, the sustainability and efficiency of the poultry industry and explore the above-mentioned areas through applications of PPF solutions in poultry meat and egg production

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The proceedings of the 12th World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production provide you with 816 papers representing the leading research in livestock genetics around the globe. This book covers all aspects of genetics applied to livestock production in 44 sections. Next to the exciting plenary speakers, and the recurrent technical and species orientated sections, there are sections focusing on specific challenges for animal breeding. For instance, large-scale phenotyping of individual animals, use of whole genome sequence data and improving genomic prediction, and sessions on the contribution that genetics can make to societal challenges, like animal welfare, climate change, biodiversity, or control of infectious diseases.

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This book makes the case for an urgent move away from industrial agriculture towards regenerative farming and the promotion of plant-based diets. How we produce, distribute and consume food are critical issues for the health and well-being of humans, animals and the environment. In order to develop a sustainable food system, this book argues for a radical change in farming and food consumption. Containing contributions from world renowned experts, this book promotes regenerative farming as the means to preserve planetary health, establish sustainable, healthy and secure diets and safeguard the welfare of animals. Chapters discuss broad ranging issues from climate change and biodiversity conservation to animal sentience and intensive farming, and the role of financial markets and food businesses. The book concludes with chapters discussing the routes in policy and practice to transforming the food system and achieving real-world change. This book is a must read for students, scholars and policymakers interested in establishing sustainable farming and food systems, for human health, animal welfare and environmental protection.

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