Conceptual framework for investigating causal effects from observational data in livestock.

ABSTRACT: Understanding causal mechanisms among variables is critical to efficient management of complex biological systems such as animal agriculture production. The increasing availability of data from commercial livestock operations offers unique opportunities for attaining causal insight, despite the inherently observational nature of these data. Causal claims based on observational data are substantiated by recent theoretical and methodological developments in the rapidly evolving field of causal inference. Thus, the objectives of this review are as follows: 1) to introduce a unifying conceptual framework for investigating causal effects from observational data in livestock, 2) to illustrate its implementation in the context of the animal sciences, and 3) to discuss opportunities and challenges

SUBMITTER: Bello NM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6162585 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature