The Role of Climate Control in Monogastric Animal Farming: The Effects on Animal Welfare, Air Emissions, Productivity, Health, and Energy Use

Abstract

In the last decades, an engineering process has deeply transformed livestock houses by introducing fine-tuned climate control systems to guarantee adequate indoor climate conditions needed to express the maximum genetic potential of animals and to increase their productivity. Climate control, hence, has strong relation with productivity but also with other livestock production domains, outlining a web of mutual relations between them. The objective of this work is to understand the actual role of climate control in intensive livestock houses by unpicking this web of mutual relations through a literature review. The results show that climate control plays a key role in intensive livestock houses since it has strong relations with animal welfare, air emissions, productivity, health, and energy use. These relations make it essential to adopt an integrated approach for the assessment of the effectiveness of any proposed improvement in the different domains of livestock production. This is especially true considering aspects such as the expected increase of livestock production in developing countries and global warming. For this purpose, integrated climate control models of livestock houses are needed, representing a challenging opportunity for performing investigations in this research field.