From a standard to an output oriented ap-proach in organic livestock farming

Summary

Although standards of organic livestock production clearly exceed the legal minimum requirements in many areas, the current performance in relation to animal health and product quality often does not surpass the level of conventional production and does not always meet the self-proclaimed aims and the expectations of the consumers.
Thus, the standards lack efficiency in the implementa-tion of organic principles. Taking the system approach of organic farming into account, the implementation of feed back mechanisms is required to correspond to the teleological behaviour of open systems. Moreover, there is a need for a change in the paradigm from a standard to an output oriented approach to improve the level of animal health and of product quality.