Background: In many parts of the world, livestock production is undergoing a process of rapid intensification. The health implications of this development are uncertain. Intensification creates cheaper products, allowing more people to access animal-based foods. However, some practices associated with intensification may contribute to zoonotic disease emergence and spread: for example, the sustained use of antibiotics, concentration of animals in confined units, and long distances and frequent movement of livestock.Objectives: Here we present the diverse range of ecological, biological, and socioeconomic factors likely to enhance or reduce zoonotic risk, and identify ways in which a comprehensive risk analysis may be conducted by using an interdisciplinary approach. We also offer a conceptual framework to guide systematic research on this problem.Discussion: We recommend that interdisciplinary work on zoonotic risk should take into account the complexity of risk environments, rather than limiting studies to simple linear causal relations between risk drivers and disease emergence and/or spread. In addition, interdisciplinary integration is needed at different levels of analysis, from the study of risk environments to the identification of policy options for risk management.Conclusion: Given rapid changes in livestock production systems and their potential health implications at the local and global level, the problem we analyze here is of great importance for environmental health and development. Although we offer a systematic interdisciplinary approach to understand and address these implications, we recognize that further research is needed to clarify methodological and practical questions arising from the integration of the natural and social sciences.

The diseases suffered by British livestock, and the ways in which they were perceived and managed by farmers, vets and the state, changed considerably over the course of the twentieth century. This paper documents and analyses these changes in relation to the development of public policy. It reveals that scientific knowledge and disease demographics cannot by themselves explain the shifting boundaries of state responsibility for animal health, the diseases targeted and the preferred modes of intervention. Policies were shaped also by concerns over food security and the public's health, the state of the national and livestock economy, the interests and expertise of the veterinary profession, and prevailing agricultural policy. This paper demonstrates how, by precipitating changes to farming and trading practices, public policy could sometimes actually undermine farm animal health. Animal disease can therefore be viewed both as a stimulus to, and a consequence of, twentieth century public policy.

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From 1945, Zebu cattle living on the Indian sub-content were exhaustively identified, enumerated and evaluated by officials working for the newly created Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations (UN). These indigenous, humped-backed cattle (Bos Indicus) provided crucial sources of draught power, food, and income to the area's human inhabitants. Surveying them was a lengthy and painstaking process that took seven years to complete. It was disrupted by political events such as the partition of India, the creation of Pakistan, and the end of British rule in 1947, which impacted on the provision of agricultural services and the presence of technical experts able to attend to the Zebu. It was made more difficult by the Zebu themselves. Numbering over 100 million in India alone (which held nearly half of the world's population), their living conditions, locations, and roles within agrarian systems varied greatly, as did their physical state. Investigators identified at least twenty-eight distinct breeds, whose diverse sizes, shapes and productive capacities reflected their adaptation to particular climates and environments. Many were burdened by chronic infections, parasites, and malnutrition, which undermined their health and limited their abilities to fulfil their human-designated roles. 1 The Zebu attracted attention at this time due to the findings of the FAO's first World Food Survey. Reporting in 1946, it anticipated a growing food crisis across much of the world: production was below prewar levels, famine had just devastated Bengal, and millions of people were unable to meet their basic calorie requirements. With the world's population predicted to increase exponentially, the situation would only deteriorate. 2 The Zebu survey formed one facet of the FAO's response. It sought to identify those cattle with the greatest potential to develop more productive bodies, and to enrol them in a campaign to combat human hunger. This campaign extended beyond India to Latin America, Africa, and much of Asia, and enlisted not only cattle but also buffalo, chickens, pigs and others. However, the recognized importance of milk for child growth and development, and the vitamin, mineral and protein deficiencies that it helped to address, meant that cattle played a central role. This role was not entirely new. The twin challenges of improving human nutrition through increased milk consumption, and developing agriculture through improvements in livestock health and production, had preoccupied nations, colonies and the League of Nations during the inter-war years, culminating in calls to 'marry food and agriculture.' 3 However, it was only after the war, under the aegis of the FAO and the World Health Organisation (WHO), that these two agendas became truly integrated. In framing healthy, productive cattle as essential to the production of healthy, wellnourished humans, these organisations encouraged experts in human and veterinary medicine to transcend the institutional and disciplinary boundaries that had grown ...

The London Veterinary College circa 1800. Teaching at the college, which was located on the present-day site of the Royal Veterinary College's Camden campus, was subject to strong medical influence for several decades after its foundation in 1791 Photograph: Wellcome Images

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This article uses a study of pig production in Britain, c.1910-65, to rethink the history of modern agriculture and its implications for human-animal relationships. Drawing on literature written by and for pig producers and experts, it challenges existing portrayals of a unidirectional, post-Second World War shift from traditional small-scale mixed farming to large, specialized, intensive systems. Rather, 'factory-style' pig production was already established in Britain by the 1930s, and its fortunes waxed and waned over time in relation to different kinds of outdoor production, which was still prominent in the mid-1960s. In revealing that the progressive proponents of both indoor and outdoor methods regarded them as modern and efficient, but defined and pursued these values in quite different ways, the article argues for a more historically situated understanding of agricultural modernity. Analysis reveals that regardless of their preferred production system, leading experts and producers were keen to develop what they considered to be natural methods that reflected the pig's natural needs and desires. They perceived pigs as active, sentient individuals, and believed that working in harmony with their natures was essential, even if this was, ultimately, for commercial ends. Such views contradict received accounts of modern farming as a utilitarian enterprise, concerned only with dominating and manipulating nature. They are used to argue that a romantic, moral view of the pig did not simply pre-date or emerge in opposition to modern agriculture, but, rather, was integral to it.

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