| dc.description.abstract | Game farming is becoming an increasingly lucrative industry. The owning of game animals and farms has been around for decades and has increased significantly. This situation is illustrated by the fact that in 2019 there were approximately over 10 000 game farms in South Africa as opposed to 1991 where there were around 3 500.In the past, wild animals were considered as ‘res nullius’ meaning that they were owned by no one. Ownership was achieved by having physical control over the animals through the South African common law. Resultantly, animals roaming on a game farm did not necessarily belong to the landowner as they had no physical control over the animal concerned. Game farms are essentially farms which keep and/or breed certain wild captive wild animals (referred to as ‘game’) on a farm for either commercial or aesthetic purposes. Already in 1980 and 1981, 1446 tonnes of venison was exported from South Africa, showing that game has been commercially farmed for decades.4 ‘Industrial farming’, in turn, has been defined by the National Resources Defence Council5 as being a large-scale intense production of both crops and animals and is also known as commercial farming or factory farming. | en_US |
