The design of modern animal production systems in the last five decades has focused largely on the potential of efficient production. It implies that it is a challenge of managing the system properly to realize this potential in practice. Realizing the potential with management has become increasingly difficult due to legislation for sustainable animal production or pressure from citizen groups.
Several crises in the last 15 years have had a major impact on various animal production chains. The question is whether these incidents are freak accidents or whether there is an underlying problem. To answer this question we need to look into the impact of potential disturbances on animal production systems in a structured manner and across system levels.
Robustness and resilience are two approaches to minimize the impact of disturbances. There is ample unexplored opportunity to adopt these approaches in the design of the animal production systems.
Comparing modern industrialized animal production with the characteristics of a resilient system, it appears that current animal production chains are rigid and highly connected, making them prone to a large impact of a small disturbance.
Designing and managing a system should start with minimizing variability, followed by aiming at the desired level. We propose that variability should not be regarded as just a statistical property of a trait, but as an additional trait itself. To illustrate this, we apply the squared residual approach to field data and experimental data of incubating and hatching broilers and layers.
Speakers:
Prof. Peter Groot Koerkamp, Wageningen University and
Dr.ir. Jan ten Napel, Wageningen Livestock Research
Zodiac academic lectures are an initiative of the department of Animal Sciences and take place every first Tuesday of the month.
Following lecture February 1st 2011.