The multicriteria assessment of livestock systems to support their evolution: issues, challenges and interrogations

The emergence of the notion of sustainable development has led to a shift from single-criterion-oriented evaluations to more integrated assessments covering the different dimensions of livestock performance: economics, social, health, welfare and the environment. Many methodological questions arise from the confrontation of these dimensions which have different measurement scales. How to support the evolution of livestock systems with a multicriteria assessment? How to well define the purposes of the evaluation? How to manage the multiplicity of information? How to interpret a set of indicators together when they take opposite values? Which tools to mobilize? Should we use or create our own assessment tools? Livestock farming with its multiple stakes at different scales herd, farm and territory, is particularly concerned with these issues. The participation of the actors in the evaluation process is also a question to be decided: are they co-designers of the method, validators, surveyors or only recipients of the results? These different elements will lead to the definition of the best methods of mathematical data processing. This data processing is intimately linked to how the results are represented and how they are used. This paper discusses the different uses of multicriteria evaluations applied to livestock systems and the key methodological points.