A new take on animal farming, precision livestock farming (PLF) was born as a reaction of the pressure from world market prices, causing farmers to focus on efficiency, large-scale production and automation, while still wanting to maintain animal welfare. Dr Heiner Lehr of Syntesa addresses the obstacles to adoption of PLF, as well as recent advances to overcome such obstacles. The main body of material comes from three EU-sponsored research projects, namely BrightAnimal, ALL-SMART-PIGS (www.all-smart-pigs.com) and EU-PLF (www.eu-plf.eu).