Toward a Theory of Proactive Health-Oriented Livestock Production: A Testable Conceptual Framework for Alpine Pastoral Systems

Livestock production must reconcile animal health, food safety, ecological limits, and farm viability. This narrative review proposes proactive health-oriented livestock production (PHLP) as a testable conceptual framework for alpine pastoral systems and as a step toward theory development, rather than as an already validated general theory. PHLP does not claim novelty for vaccination, nutrition, welfare, biosecurity, precision monitoring, or low-carbon practices considered separately. Its proposed contribution is a decision architecture that forecasts context- and stage-specific risk, detects deviation with a feasible sentinel dataset, activates a matched intervention before avoidable loss becomes clinically or economically visible, and recalibrates local triggers from animal, product, ecosystem, and livelihood outcomes. The hypothesized pathway links cold, hypoxia, forage scarcity, pathogen exposure, and management stress to sentinel change, trigger-based action, lower cumulative stress, and greater immune–metabolic, rumen–gut, and behavioral stability. We define entry points, priority rules, initial boundary conditions, measurable indicators, and three testable propositions for Tibetan sheep, yak, and other alpine ruminants. PHLP is expected to be most useful when a consequential risk has usable lead time, a sentinel variable can be observed, and a feasible action is available; it complements rather than replaces emergency clinical care and statutory disease control. Comparative longitudinal and multisite studies are needed to calibrate triggers and test whether PHLP improves decision timeliness and reduces seasonal body-condition loss, morbidity, mortality, antimicrobial treatment, product-quality variability, and emission intensity relative to reactive or calendar-based management.