Document(s) 14 de 18

Livestock keeping in and around cities is a practice that can be traced back to ancient times. The functions and forms of urban livestock have changed over time, and after decades of neglect, the roles of urban livestock are now being recognised again by urban officials. This chapter reviews the categorisations, relevance and logic of urban livestock keeping in past and modern society. It stresses that animals can be both a nuisance and a benefit, serving several direct and indirect functions in urban ecosystems, each with different priorities at household, city and national level.

'For want of a nail the war was lost...'
ancient story

'The city requires an awful lot of countryside to be able to breathe'
Geert Mak

Livestock keeping in urbanised areas, does history repeat itself?

Hans Schiere
Eric Thys
Francine Matthys

Barbara Rischkowsky
Jaap Schiere

Introduction

Livestock keeping has been and is important in and around ancient and modern cities (Waters Bayer, 1996; Schiere, 2001). It is but one form of urban agriculture, and it often occurs in integration with others such as urban horticulture. Animals were kept in biblical towns, in ancient and medieval cities of Europe, and in Mayan as well as Chinese civilisations. Horse-, camel- and/or bullock carts carried - and continue to carry - goods and armies. Many 'modern' cities still have 'cow-streets' and 'hay-markets' as remnants from times when livestock was part and parcel of urban life. Just 100 years ago, the city of Copenhagen fed cows with the 'wastes' of beer production, and rabbits thrived on London balconies in World War II whilst sheep "mowed" the lawns of Capitol Hill. Even today, slum dwellers get extra cash from backyard chickens, the urban elite keep pets, and urban livestock actually helps to remove organic wastes while being blamed for causing pollution. Strangely, the Victorian English were glad to see horses being replaced by cars because that would reduce the pollution (=horse dung). No doubt livestock keeping in urban conditions has its drawbacks, from being noisy and smelly, to causing serious pandemics such as SARS and illnesses such as tapeworm infections.

Urban livestock is now being (re)discovered by officials, research and development workers, but it exists regardless of official recognition. In many countries livestock or urban farming is an activity that does not have an official status. For example, officials of Mexico City denied the presence of pigs on roofs of apartment buildings until they found animals walking in the rubble in the aftermath of an earthquake that destroyed the buildings in the early eighties. When there is lack of official acknowledgement, research-, policy-and development agencies can neither address the risks, nor use the potential benefits of animal keeping in and around cities (box 12.1). In fact, livestock is often banned in countries where poor people depend on it for their livelihood. But also in wealthier places like Singapore, nuisance and pollution have been reasons for doing away with most forms of livestock keeping. Often, such bans are a reflection of a narrow view on the multiple functions of livestock.

Livestock is part of daily life in Dar Es Salaam

This chapter reviews the categorisations, importance, opportunities and threats of urban livestock keeping around the world. In doing so, we support a livelihoods approach which stresses that a singular focus on food and/or income generation cannot do justice to the many functions of animals in society (Thys et al., 2006; or see the case of Sweden). The direct roles of livestock may be small but the indirect roles can be crucial, in socio-cultural and biophysical aspects. Livestock keeping may fulfil crucial roles (see table 12.2), whether they can be quantified (income or physical health) or not (social networks and mental wellbeing). In addition to the livelihoods analysis, we stress the need for non-linear thinking that focuses on variation and similarity, as well as on inherent logic and necessity of urban livestock systems (Schiere, 2001). This chapter reviews short- and long-term action regarding livelihoods, public health, poverty reduction, CO₂ emissions and biodiversity. It also emphasises the need to address future priorities, and attempts to raise issues for discussion rather than to only settle disputes.

Importance and Categories of Urban Livestock Systems

The role of urban livestock is now recognised in many poor and wealthy countries. Although Box 12.2 and table 1 provide statistics that confirm the importance of urban livestock, there is more to it than data alone. Poor people tend to keep animals to cope with poverty, while wealthier sections of society justify the need for urban livestock to keep pets, and/or to secure a steady supply of animal produce. The functions and forms of urban livestock keeping vary, but we stress the need to look at variation and similarity. Variation is change (=development) in the forms and functions of urban livestock, as well as the recurrence of basic forms. In capturing this variation, we loosely characterise rather than strictly define urban livestock systems:

Urban livestock systems occur in a large variation of forms and functions, in and around densely populated areas, and they strongly interact with surrounding communities, poor as well as wealthy, at several levels of system hierarchy, as well as with rural areas.

This characterisation complements the one on urban areas by UNDP (1996):

Urban encompasses the entire area in which a city's sphere of influence (social, ecological and economical), comes to bear daily and directly on the population.

Characterisation instead of definition reflects non-linear system thinking. It prefers to use surprise and change rather than average solutions and standard approaches. For example, in non-linear thinking livestock can be a labour opportunity for poor people, rather than being a problem in terms of labour demand for wealthier groups; animal excreta can be a resource rather than a waste; and animals can help to clean the city by removing garbage rather than cause disease by producing garbage. Strict definition cannot do justice to the variation of systems - keeping of pets by urban elite, to industrial poultry keeping to goats in slums. Use of variation helps to see patterns that repeat themselves, which can be a basis to design classifications for useful discussion (Schiere, 2001; or see the case of Addis Ababa).

Some classifications use the difference between city-types, eg. between inner city and the outskirts, depending also on whether one considers relatively open or dense cities. It is indeed quite common to distinguish "rings", eg. urban (inner city), urbanising (fringe), and more rural systems. Such rings as in figure 12.1 are useful notions, but they are neither static nor isolated from each other. They also occur at different levels within and between neighbourhoods. For example, a poor lady keeping backyard chickens may live next door to a wealthy merchant in an affluent area, wealthy people produce left overs in urban restaurants that help poor farmers keep animals, and a small city may actually be part of a larger one. Less common distinctions are based on scale and the use of fossil fuel energy (table 12.2 and figure 12.1). They relate to issues such as community resilience, resource flows, social structure or CO₂ emissions. The recent outbreaks of SARS and avian influenza may require distinctions based on health risks, eg. by being especially alert for systems where waterfowl and people interact closely.

Table 12.1 Annual per capita consumption of livestock products in Beijing

Based on Bingsheng, 1998.

In Figure 12.1.a and b, the scale, system structure and aspects of (social) control in different urban livestock systems is presented. It aims to show variation and similarity, as well as different magnitudes of resource flows and cycles. The concentric circles in both graphs represent resp. inner city, urbanising area, peri-urban regions and the rural districts. Small scale livestock keeping (left side of the two semi-circles) tends to use small animals and small enterprises, as well as local recycling and -thus- little waste as represented by the small semi-cycles with arrow. In this case some young stock and feed is imported from the rural regions, but animal keeping takes place mostly at local level (within-city). The large-scale enterprises (right hand circles) tend to use larger animals and/or larger production units. Feed, young stock and even skills, medicine and fossil fuels are largely imported from the countryside in case of bulky roughage for ruminants, and from external sources in the case of more sophisticated feedstuff. Leftovers from large-scale agro-industry are processed. The inflow of resources from bottom and top right can be considered as part of a cycle, if waste is not disposed of into canals and drains. In all cases the resource flows of the larger animals and enterprises are of a larger magnitude than those of smaller animals/enterprises, generally requiring more prime quality feed and (fossil) energy for transport. They, therefore tend to be under control of larger businesses than the livestock systems with smaller scales and cycles as depicted in the picture on the left. These sketches are based on personal observation and generalisation.

Figure 12.1 a and b System structure and aspects of control in different urban livestock systems

Table 12.2 Categorisations of urban livestock systems

Based on UNDP, 1996; Waters Bayer, 1996; Schiere, 2001.

Note: dotted lines indicate that more patterns exist than shown here. Columns are divided by double lines since they are independent listings.

Table 12.3 Issues of scale and energy use

In this table approximations are used based on common sense and are meant to stimulate rather than to freeze discussion.

Note 1: exception proves the rule; rabbits etc. can also be kept on the balcony as pets by wealthy urbanites.

Note 2: question marks imply uncertainty regarding this aspect due to local differences.

Logic and Advantages of Urban Livestock Systems

The fact that urban livestock continues to be found around the globe implies advantages for local "stakeholders" to embark on some form of urban livestock keeping. These advantages could be in one or more of factors such as food supply, income, emotion, tradition, savings, ecological functions (like scavenging) and social coherence, in spite of the nuisance of a noisy goat or a smelly pig. Singling out of one of these factors would most likely miss out the essence of urban livestock keeping and agriculture in general; but simple calculations may illustrate processes that repeatedly lead to similarities and differences of such systems. For example, a simple calculation during a lunch break in Nakuru (some 150 km. west of Nairobi) helped explain changing functions and forms of livestock keeping when approaching the city (table 12.4). This common sense reasoning in 1997 strongly resembles the 'rings' found by the German economist Von Thünen some 150 years ago. Such calculations show how forms and functions of livestock systems change based on environmental pressure and/or socio-cultural attitudes. They also illustrate system dynamics and often unnoticed movements of resources and animals from rural to (peri)-urban areas for fattening or milking, now referred to as urban-rural linkages. Flows of young animals to the city as illustrated in figure 12.1 are often accompanied - in the case of dairy- with a reverse flow of dry and barren animals that recover on the range and are brought back to the city again for higher yields with higher density feed. These are given the term "flying herds" in urban livestock jargon. Milk is a valuable product in the city, where it can be too expensive to rear young animals. But milk in distant regions cannot be sold well where it makes more sense to raise animals. And feeds fetch higher prices when fed to animals in cities than in rural areas. Similar reasons explain why large-scale hatcheries are established in the countryside, while the actual production of eggs takes place in peri-urban regions. Factors such as climate, disease pressure, local politics and labour costs may complicate these processes but not the general patterns. In short, urban animal keeping has its advantages and disadvantages, like everything else in real life (table 12.5).

In fact, it is particularly the larger urban livestock systems that are linked to the rural areas and other urban systems, through exchange of inputs of feed, animals, labour, and outputs of cash for extended families in the rural areas or manure for vegetable farming (see figure 12.1). The resource flows from city to rural areas and vice versa are seen in West Africa where a part of Fulani families settle in the cities and keep high milking cows to sell the milk, while the main part of the herd is kept by other family members under pastoral production conditions. Dairy farmers in the Pakistani Punjab buy the best cows in rural areas soon after calving and keep them in cities to get high prices for the buffalo milk on the urban market (Seré and Neidhardt, 1994). Traders of forage in Maroua/Cameroon tend to be farmers from the surrounding rural areas at a maximum distance of 40 km. In other words, the logic of urban livestock keeping is based on the positive roles of livestock in urban and rural areas.

Table 12.4 Forms, functions, interrelationships and problems in dairy production systems

This table is based on a case from Nakuru (Kenya; prices in KSh/kg). The assumption is that 1 kg concentrate feed yields 1.5 kg of milk. In the first column (close to city) it makes sense to feed concentrates for milk, while it makes no sense to do so in areas far from the city. The row "milk market" comes from data collected at Pondicherry (India), as are the prices and yields between brackets (Ramkumar, pers. comm., 2004)

Table 12.5 Potentially positive and/or negative aspects of animal keeping.

The list does not give absolute "values", it leaves final value-judgements on positive / negative aspects to local context and stakeholders' opinions, and in that sense some issues occur in both the left and right hand column.

Figure 12.2 Movement of sheep from the countryside to Dakar (Senegal)

This is from low to high energy density feed areas, and from producer to consumer (Diaw et al., 1999)

Disadvantages of Urban Livestock

Urban livestock keeping has its advantages, but also its disadvantages. Non-linear system thinking and common sense accept such trade-offs as a fact of life. But mainstream thinking tends to exclude livestock from cities almost across the board, e.g. due to notions of backwardness and risks associated with keeping livestock such as disease and nuisance. A complicating matter is that (in non-linear thinking) a disadvantage in one place can be an advantage elsewhere or for someone else. And indeed urban livestock does have its drawbacks, perhaps more than urban horticulture (see chapter 11). Some disadvantages threaten the general public, e.g. in the case of SARS and avian influenza. Others are just a nuisance, as is the noise of a goat (in spite of so many other noises in the city), smell, dust, flies (what about rats appearing if garbage is left uneaten by livestock), damage to gardens (ignore damage by cars or house builders to trees and plants), or a notion of backwardness implied in urban livestock keeping (wealthy people like to show off with horses or exotic birds) Table 12.5 lists advantages and disadvantages, which depend on stakeholders' priorities and conditions.

Following up on the earlier categorisations and rings of urban systems it is safe to say that problems of urban livestock increase with high concentrations of animals and people, particularly in unhygienic urban environments. Animals near homes and workplaces may be a nuisance to neighbours (odour, noise), clog sewage systems, cause traffic problems and/or contaminate water sources (UNDP, 1996). Pollution can be high in systems based on imported feed (the rich systems), not in the "poor" systems where animals serve to clean the environment by scavenging and eating leftovers. Animals may also cause disease and in-equality by increasing the workload of women and children, while at the same time contributing to their independence and health by providing essential nutrients or savings. Such contradictions are the core of what we call a "surprise" in non-linear system thinking and form the basis on which we stress the need for tailor-made solutions and useful categorisations. Participatory technology development gains favour around the world because it helps find local solutions for local problems, also in urban livestock keeping. And last but not least, it is the disadvantages that harbour opportunities, if properly addressed.

Sheep roaming free in the city, Sweden

Critical Issues and Opportunities for Short and Long Term

Much is now documented on technical and socio-cultural aspects of urban farming and livestock keeping and major issues are summarized in table 12.6. Issues of short term-, farm-and society-level actions are covered in journals and books, in the other cases of this section, in the RUAF journal, in Schiere & Van Der Hoek (2001) and in handbooks and practical literature on backyard animals. Many practical cases of urban livestock are also known, e.g. as described for poultry and dairy in Eastern Africa by Sumberg (1998/1999) or by Tegegne (see the case on Addis Ababa), or on small ruminants in the USA (see box 12.3 by Bellows, et al,. 2000).

We therefore chose to address issues other than dung disposal or hygienic food preparation when discussing the future of urban livestock keeping. These 'other' issues are not more important than farm-level work, but they tend to get lost in the rush of the day and short-term solutions. And they do need policy back up, whether in poor or wealthy countries. By and large they are:

• global concerns regarding food security, poverty, energy use, CO₂ and biodiversity
  
  
• public health hazards from SARS to parasite infections and hidden issues of community 'health' like social cohesion and resilience.
  
  
• the need for flexible public administration and the notion of tailor-made solutions

The challenge is to provide new vistas for work with urban livestock, and one should not justify urban livestock because one happens to like it, or because it happens to exist. The future of good urban livestock keeping practices lies in the analysis of how and why it occurs, and on how or why it could be of use in the future. Some arguments overlap with those for urban agriculture in general, but livestock has its own issues such as dung and noise over pesticides and herbicides, or avian influenza over weeding and pruning.

Food security and poverty, energy and CO₂, biodiversity and scale

Work on urban livestock can be justified or criticised on many grounds, but an important set of arguments, concerns and obligations are contained in the international conventions such as Rio (biodiversity), Kyoto (on CO2) and Johannesburg (food security and poverty alleviation). Put together, these obligations are painful, contradictory and inherently hard or impossible to fulfil. For example, how can the need for lowering CO₂ emissions be reconciled with the political urgency of creating jobs and increasing consumer spending? And how can notions to stimulate industrial animal production to supply increasingly wealthy urban consumers with animal proteins be reconciled with the approach of poor urban producers to consider animals as scavengers. Much of what follows in this chapter focuses on the keeping of livestock by the poorer sections of people in urban areas, focusing on small-scale systems with mostly small animals in slums and backyards, in balconies and on rooftops, as well as on larger animals in peri urban regions. Industrial systems require their own approach, but that discussion is beyond this chapter, in spite of the useful lessons that different systems can learn from each other, eg. regarding notions of multi-functionality (livelihood-analysis!), small-scale gardening or recycling, and re-establishing links between consumers and the countryside.

The above mentioned international conventions offer good arguments, particularly for keeping of smaller animals and related enterprises, for example:

• food security is served both by the actual supplies of nutrients and income, as stressed by the use of livelihood approaches. A focus on food-output by industrial systems overlooks significant roles of small urban livestock in terms of scavenging, and of producing local food where needed and affordable, thus supporting community resilience
  
  
• small and diverse animal production systems fit well in notions to enhance local (bio)-diversity. If well done, small scale urban agriculture can be a seedbed of diversity, in terms of ingenuity as well as resilience. The associated notion of "requisite variety" as it is called in academic terms, implies that systems need a variation of organisms [and sectors] to clean its waste, thus potentially increasing local hygiene.
  
  
• small scales tend to depend less on fossil energy than larger scales, eg. by requiring less transport, refrigeration and packaging, and may also better use local leftovers,. One study of food systems in the UK showed that a meal from imported ingredients generates nearly 650 times the transport and related CO₂ emissions than when made from the same but locally-grown ingredients (Halweil, 2002).

Table 12.6 Areas for further work on a rather short-term and local scale

Note: prepared during a workshop on urban livestock in West Africa (ITC, The Gambia) in January 2005. They are mainly technical. The sub-topics were listed by participants, and clustered by Okike and Kofi.

Studies on the value of urban livestock for food alone is of little value or even misleading, as are more detailed studies on purely the numerical importance of livestock without speciation of categories, relations and multifunctionality. Studying the roles of livestock with livelihoods analysis can provide new clues for planners and policy makers. Work on issues like feeding of particular by-products is likely to be "more of the same" and is probably better done [in cooperation] with 'farmers' themselves who are the best location-specific experts. The future of urban livestock keeping depends on a better understanding of underlying issues such as food security, poverty alleviation, resource use efficiency, and trade-offs between these.

Public health and emerging zoonotic diseases

Disease risks of urban livestock systems are likely to need much more attention in the near future. This should, however, be a reorientation towards a more holistic focus on social issues and system specificity, moving away from a single focus on disease as a clinical issue. Recent cases of SARS and avian influenza in densely populated areas of Asia have made zoonoses a major concern in public health (Aldhous, 2005). Indeed, the combination of high densities of people and animals in the same location can increase the risk of disease, but is not true that industrial animal production necessarily increases these risks. Poor hygiene and a lot of direct contact between people and animals can have the same high risks. Disease is transmitted from animals to people in many ways, by direct contact and also through consumption of animal products. Some of this can also lead to epidemics and transmission from humans to humans, eg. in the case of yellow fever (Van Der Stuyft et al., 1999). Human health inextricably links to animal health and production, where animals play an important cultural and socio-economic role (WHO, 1999). Urbanisation causes changes in behaviour of humans in food purchases or contact with animals and pets and increases risks for spread of zoonotic diseases in poor hygienic conditions.

Zoonoses can be distinguished into viral (rabies, SARS, avian influenza), bacterial (eg. tuberculosis, brucellosis) and parasitic (e.g. cysticercosis and tapeworms) forms. Some viral forms, eg. rabies and avian influenza, are the result of direct contact between animals and humans. But others zoonoses such as yellow fever, plague or trypanosomiasis have animal carriers and are transmitted from animals to humans by mosquitoes, fleas and/or flies. Parasitic diseases could be tapeworm related as in hydatidosis and human neuro-cysticercosis (Van t'Hooft, 2000). Brucellosis and tuberculosis are linked to increased dairy production in the urban and peri-urban context, inadequate milk processing and uncontrolled market chains (Muchaal, 2001). Recently, Traoré et al. (2004) reported 13 percent brucellosis and 28 percent tuberculosis among intra-urban dairy cattle in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), but little is known on numbers of human cases of tuberculosis caused by Mycobacterium bovis. Also, tuberculosis is an opportunistic infection in HIV+ persons in sub-Saharan Africa. M. bovis may also become opportunistic in HIV infected populations, as happens with zoonoses such as listeriosis.

Food-borne zoonotic diseases also become more important due to a higher demand for meat by a growing urban population. Poor slaughter hygiene can lead to contamination of carcasses, and larger scales can increase risks of mass-transmission diseases. Drinking water and vegetables contaminated with slaughterhouse wastewater can transmit pathogenic agents such as Salmonella sp., Campylobacter sp., and Escherichia coli producing toxins (Pal et al., 1999). Food that is poorly preserved in refrigerators due to frequent power cuts may amplify the problem of food contamination. These diseases, with the exception of toxin poisoning, can be transmitted from person to person, but little is known on the importance of these diseases. For example, diarrhoea is frequent and therefore considered rather banal in many countries, i.e., the causes are rarely investigated. In the early stages of the production process, contamination of feed with infected faeces (eg. Salmonella) can lead to infection in animals. Animal products can further contain residues of antibiotics or pesticides, and allergens from livestock waste or dust can cause occupational diseases in farm workers and proximity diseases in neighbours (McBride, 1998).

Guinea Pig (Cuy) breeding in Lima, Peru. The materials needed are cheap and locally available.

The growing trend of health problems relates in part to the inadequacy and deterioration of public health and veterinary infrastructure in poor countries (WHO, 1999). For example, Coulibaly and Yameogo (2000) reported a lack of collaboration between public health and animal production services in controlling zoonosis in Burkina Faso. Currently veterinary services in many cities of developing countries seem more concerned by rabies and eradication of stray dogs (Meslin et al., 1996). On the other hand, the prohibitive costs of private or state veterinary services make smallholders reluctant to ask for help, and more so because they tend to be part of an informal or even clandestine sector. In addition, there are often no adequate testing facilities, farmers can easily evade the public health systems and many are unaware of the public health risks associated with keeping of animals in proximity to human populations (UNDP, 1996; Guendel, 2002).

Traditional Cisticercosis control at a weekly market in Bolivia

In spite of all this, not much research has been up to now in comparing the specific risks of urban to rural livestock keeping. Real risks do exist, depending on the location (rural, peri-urban, inner city), the kind of livestock and the way they are kept. A survey among African experts from 27 West and Central African cities showed that only 43 percent of them had heard of diseases transmitted to humans from animals in urban contexts, but not all these cases were confirmed (Thys & Geerts, 2002). Protective frameworks are required to deal with the upward trends in disease occurrence due to increasing population pressure and densities and the multidimensionality of health. Intensification of animal production in and around cities combined with changing food habits make food safety a priority issue. Climate change coupled with increased population density can favour the further spread of vectors and diseases (Wittmann & Baylis, 2000; Ungchusak, 2005; Aldhous, 2005). In this context, there is a grave risk in paying too much attention to politically-sensitive diseases as SARS that divert interest away from more fatal disorders. Municipal, veterinary and public health services should work together and search for newer approaches because of the relations between human and animal health, and the socio-economic importance of animal production especially for the poorer people in the city.

Public administration and policy

The final 'higher-level issue' addressed in this chapter is the thinking about public policy, and the need for paradigm shifts. Steps are needed to move away from thinking in standard/linear solutions to one aspect (eg. to cure disease) toward approaches that consider combinations of factors (disease, population density, community organisation), multiple functions as stressed in livelihoods analysis, differences between communities, and surprise and tension due to different perceptions in participatory approaches. A few of the points that could be considered are that:

• it may be better to accept and regulate (in a non-linear way), than to ignore a sector that clearly fulfils a need of urban inhabitants. An example could be the provision of official status for selected forms of urban livestock keeping, particularly in urban zones where it is now illegal (see box 12.4). Possible systems are (cleanly kept) small animals such as rabbits, guinea pigs and small fowl on balconies and goats, sheep or even larger animals in the peri-urban areas. Waterfowl are a type of animal to be wary of with respect to avian influenza.
  
  
• educators, administrators and policy makers are key to rediscovering opportunities of urban livestock. Educators can teach hygiene and good forms of urban livestock (Arias, 2002). Administrators may start by considering the differences between regions and the wealth of communities when addressing problems and opportunities. Policies that ban livestock can be enforced in [affluent] places like Singapore but they often promote illegal livestock keeping with associated problems of public health.
  
  
• innovative and generally participatory work is needed to show impact and sustainability.
  
  
• creative use of public statistics and record keeping can help to give urban livestock the status that it deserves. Too much focus on numbers can divert attention from the insights into how urban systems evolve.
  
  
• reassessment of national development plans is required. Many such plans invest public money in cheap feed and tax-holidays for investors and to ensure a supply of cheap animal products, while at the same time causing costs to society in terms of pollution, use of water and oil, and shifting food waste into landfills rather than to be recycled.

Fortunately, there is increasing awareness on the opportunities of urban livestock for poverty alleviation and food production. Several African governments even officially support urban agriculture now, eg. in cities of Mozambique, Zambia and Tanzania.

Reasons for this may be opportunistic, eg. Page (2002) argued that the government of Cameroon started to support urban agriculture as a safety valve for social unrest that was expected after salary cuts were announced for civil servants. Whether due to opportunistic politics or to enlightened individuals, change is possible.

Urban Livestock and the City of the Future, Concluding Comments

The final (and linear) question here is about our vision for the ideal city of the future. But, cities change over time, and perceptions of ideals differ among stakeholders. Most urban livestock keeping occurs in places of poverty, and in unsafe and unhealthy conditions. Livestock keeping in such places is a way to make the best out of the worst, rather than to perfect urban life as a stairway to paradise. In contrast, for the urban elite, the keeping of animals refers to pets, education, feeling good (case Ledin), getting tax benefits or hiding black money. In between these extremes are systems that have evolved out of a demand for fresh products, e.g. the case of milk described in the case on Addis Ababa. The obvious nonlinear answer to the linear question is that there is no such concept as an ideal city or an ideal system of urban livestock keeping. Sketches of an ideal can nevertheless be useful, depending on the present and the thinking for the future. Such sketches include visions that consider cities as potential gardens and Utopia (box 12.5), or have utilitarian notions as found with Le Corbusier, i.e. considering cities as a good place for cheap labour to serve the economy, a step toward Utopia but at a different level.

Possible forms of future cities are suggested in the boxes, cases and literature of this section. Our 'ideal' would be a city (as a first Utopia) that is open-spaced, cooled by plants and shaded by constructions. Such a city should encourage citizens to experiment on small scale, exercising local control on major problems. Smaller livestock could play a good role in such systems. We know this will be hard to achieve, but one could, still aim for a city to incorporate aspects of urban agriculture where specific forms of livestock serve the combined roles of scavenger, pet, savings account, social activator, source of ingenuity and buffer, to name a few. Common sense can help to paint the outline, but more study is required to effectively address issues such as those raised in the global forums of Rio, Johannesburg and Kyoto. Such study should help policymakers to get to grips with ways to facilitate on-the-ground action to obtain more consistent results. Technical aspects of livestock production are sufficiently widespread to get started on the ground and/or to continue what is being done even without official recognition. Most of the issues need to be solved at farm level.

Unfortunately, many "ideal" dreams belong to contexts that are far from ideal, often miserable urban conditions around the world. Urban livestock can provide small but crucial options for the poor, while it is often the wealthy and powerful who manage the large industrial enterprises which have their own problems of pollution and resource use. Livestock keeping by the poor is likely to continue in crevices, with animals being fed on what is leftover. At the same time and as is typical of non-linearity, it might be a crucial weakness and strength of urban livestock to function as a scavenger while providing food and livelihoods for the poor and the wealthy. A main weakness and strength in this respect is the multi-functionality of – scavenging- animals that cannot produce enough food for entire urban populations, but that serve more than one goal at one time. These functions are hard to administer by conventional thinking in public sectors, but it is there perhaps where programmes for urban livestock keeping need to turn their attention to, and where most gains can be made. Even rich societies might re-discover the benefits such as education or local employment, to re-establish links between consumers and producers, short cycles for energy and resource saving, and flexible rules combined with alertness for critical issues such as SARS or Avian Influenza (see box 12.6)

Keeping of animals