Animal husbandry is a phrase not often used these days.  Productivity and efficiency are today’s buzz words, imported from the sterile world of business consultants.  Of course, the production of inanimate objects can be subjected to management science, with stock maintained at optimum levels to ensure a constant flow through the correct number of assembly lines; with quality control inspectors checking various weights and measures.  Every business manager strives to improve productivity and efficiency to help him compete in his perceived market place.

In this environment the concept of animal husbandry seems rather quaint.  The verb ‘to husband’ means ‘administer as a good steward; manage thriftily; use economically’ (The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary) ~ not nearly as exciting as maximising productivity.  But as we face yet another in a series of animal diseases culminating in mass slaughter, perhaps it is time to question whether manufacturing principles can be applied to farming.  We have killed chickens to eliminate salmonella; pigs to eliminate swine fever; cattle to eliminate BSE; and now we are killing anything with a cloven hoof to eliminate foot and mouth.  Even by manufacturing standards this hardly sounds like maximum productivity.

Over the last decade or so experts have begun to agree more and more that well-being for humans is influenced by a number of factors under the generic term ‘lifestyle’.  We need a balanced diet, correct posture, regular exercise, mental stimulus, appropriate clothing and housing, etc.  Neglecting any single factor can increase the risk of disease.  We even, it is now suggested, need exposure to germs to keep our immune systems in good working order.  It doesn’t require a degree from the University of Extrapolation to work out that as animals have more in common with human beings than with commodities such as television sets they might also benefit from a good lifestyle; some old-fashioned animal husbandry, in fact. 

In the good old (inefficient) days farmers bred and reared their own animals, which would be slaughtered by the local butcher, sold in the village shop and eaten by the residents of that same village.  Perhaps there is no going back to those days, but we could begin to question some current practices.  Intensive farming could well reduce the animal’s resistance to disease; transporting animals long distances in large quantities, whether it be to ‘fatten them up’ for market or to take them to central abattoirs, will hasten the process and make it almost impossible to prevent the spread of disease.

Any accountant will tell you that it is no good being highly efficient for eleven months of the year if you lose your shirt in the twelfth; the profit should be judged over the entire period.  But in farming we fail to integrate regular ‘disaster’ bills with the routine costs and revenue of Home Farm Great Britain.  If we did, we might discover that cutting corners with living creatures, as well as being inhumane, is actually counter-productive and grossly inefficient.  Consumers and farmers alike could be more affluent if we diverted less tax to deal with a succession of disasters and employed a higher but fair market price for meat from animals raised in good conditions.  Food for thought?