Precision livestock farming technologies including sensors, cameras, and AI offer potential to improve welfare monitoring and early disease detection at farm scale.
Precision livestock farming technologies offer genuine potential to improve farm animal welfare through earlier disease detection, continuous behavioural monitoring, and individual-level care at scale that was previously impractical. Early lameness detection reduces the duration of untreated pain. Automated welfare monitoring can identify problems that time-pressed stockpeople might miss. However, technology cannot replace skilled, attentive stockmanship and carries risks of data overreliance. Integration of precision technology with high welfare stockmanship standards offers the best outcomes.