The Phantom Cow has rights too! The Hill Hollering Knob officials tend to disagree. The officials want to eat the beef. The Phantom Cow refuses to let the officials sink their teeth into her hindquarters or anywhere else for that matter. The officials are always coming up with new ideas to sink their teeth into her beef, but so far the Phantom Cow has eluded their injustice. Who really is that .. Less The Phantom Cow has rights too! The Hill Hollering Knob officials tend to disagree. The officials want to eat the beef. The Phantom Cow refuses to let the officials sink their teeth into her hindquarters or anywhere else for that matter. The officials are always coming up with new ideas to sink their teeth into her beef, but so far the Phantom Cow has eluded their injustice. Who really is that masked cow?

One of America's leading anthropolgists offers solutions to the perplexing question of why people behave the way they do. Why do Hindus worship cows? Why do Jews and Moslems refuse to eat pork? Why did so many people in post-medieval Europe believe in witches? Marvin Harris answers these and other perplexing questions about human behavior, showing that no matter how bizarre a people's behavior may seem, it always stems from identifiable and intelligble sources.

The past decade has revealed unfavourable trends in e.g. fertility, udder health and locomotion in some major dairy cattle breeds due to a large increase in production and insufficient consideration of functional traits in the breeding goals. Such unfavourable trends in some functional traits increase costs. Additionally, the enlargement of herds leads to less available labour time per individual cow. This asks for cows that are easy to handle. At the same time, society is demanding a higher welfare standard of animals. These contradicting developments have increased the desire for so called more robust animals. Robustness can be defined as 'the ability to maintain homeostasis in commonly accepted and sustainable herds of the near future'; or 'the ability of the cow to function well in the environment she lives in as well as in a wide range of climates and production systems'. This book contains a series of articles (26) dealing with the concept of robustness, including aspects like evolution, genetics, environment, animal health and welfare, and integrity. Besides the major functional traits also the links to energy balance, hot climatic conditions, and the attitude and input of stakeholders towards robustness as part of the breeding program are discussed. This book is the first attempt to summarise the available knowledge concerning this topic in cattle, making this book unique. The contributions are from authors of 16 countries from all over the world. However, the focus is presently on farm animal level, while in future robustness of the whole production system may also require additional attention.