Precision Livestock Farming and Farmers’ Duties to Livestock

Precision livestock farming (PLF) promises to allow modern, large-scale farms to replicate, at scale, caring farmers who know their animals. PLF refers to a suite of technologies, some only speculative. The goal is to use networked devices to continuously monitor individual animals on large farms, to compare this information to expected norms, and to use algorithms to manage individual animals (e.g. via changes in climate, feeding, or reproductive decisions) automatically. Supporters say this could not only create an artificial version of the partially mythologized image of the good steward caring for his or her animals, but to also improve on it. As one paper in favor of PLF has said, “We can not only replace the farmer’s ‘eyes and ears’ to each individual animal as in the past, but several other variables (infections, physiological variables, stress, etc.) will soon be measurable in practice” (Berckmans, in: Geers, Madec (eds) Livestock production and society, Wageningen Academic Publishers, Wageningen, pp 287–292, 2006 ). Yet these methods of monitoring and control raise a host of ethical issues, including alienation of laborers, further consolidation of farms, and further cover for meat consumption (a possibly independent ethical problem depending on one’s views of eating meat). In this paper, I will address these ethical issues, and suggest a different, under-examined concern: namely, that though PLF may indeed improve the lives of livestock, and the sustainability of livestock operations, it is possible that it will do so at the cost of a loss of identity and relationships for farmers, as well as for the animals in their charge.