Livestock policy
Two questions were at the origin of this book. Firstly, why should animal breeding face severe bashing for its environmental impacts since the beginning of the millennium and for its inhuman animal‐human partnership, above all from the veganism, after it has withstood decades of criticisms for its negative social effects and its part in food safety crises, among others? Secondly, why do public policies appear as the main drivers and factors of change in the animal production sector, especially in the past decades with the demands from the environmental lobby? To understand better the processes that have occurred in the livestock sector and to sketch out evolutionary scenarios for the future, established experts have described and explained the breeding history for their respective regions trying to identify the main phases and factors of change, on the long term, for more than fifty years. Twenty-two study regions were selected in twenty countries, reflecting the wide diversity of agricultural potentials at a global scale. Each chapter covers one region whose location is shown in a world map (see next page). Crossing the information from the twenty-two case studies revealed three main findings. Firstly, public policies have been essential drivers of the dynamics of the livestock sector in almost all the cases, both in the past and today. Secondly, the same four to five main phases have been identified in nearly all the regions, showing the long history and relevancy of common processes at a global scale. Understand‐ ably, the factors of change are more or less the same, above all those acting at a global scale. Thirdly, there has been an increasing number of stakeholders, policymakers and levels of governance influencing the livestock issues as in other sectors.