Field entry, published 2026-11-03T00:00:00.000Z, updated 2026-11-03T00:00:00.000Z. Group: Major Group 6: Skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers
How are animal producers classified?
| Major group | Major Group 6: Skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers |
|---|---|
| Skill level | Skill level 2, ISCO-08, ILO |
| Code ladder | Major Group 6, then sub-major, minor and unit groups in ISCO-08 |
Classification only, not a job decision
This guide describes how ISCO-08 groups animal production. It does not decide the group or code for any particular producer.
Animal producers in ISCO-08 are skilled agricultural workers whose main work is raising animals for sale, whether the animals themselves, milk, eggs, honey, silk or other animal products form the market output. The grouping starts with the animal, because different animals demand different housing, feeding, breeding and health routines. It also starts with market purpose, because animal production mainly for household use belongs with subsistence farming, while animal production mainly for sale belongs here, in the market-oriented agricultural family of Major Group 6.
What does a day of animal production actually involve?
A producer’s year is organised around life cycles rather than calendar quarters. Feeding regimes change with age, season and production stage. Breeding decisions shape the herd or flock for years ahead. Health checks, vaccination, housing hygiene and record keeping protect animals that cannot explain a problem themselves. Milking, egg collection, shearing, honey extraction and similar harvests must be timed and handled so the product stays clean and saleable. Buying and selling decisions, feed storage and waste handling sit alongside that direct care. The skill lies in noticing small changes early: an animal eating less, a drop in yield, a change in behaviour or a housing fault that could turn into disease. Routine labour can feed animals as instructed, but skilled production adds the judgement to adjust the regime when conditions change.
How are livestock, poultry and smaller producers separated?
Livestock and dairy producers form the largest grouping, covering cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and similar animals kept for meat, milk, wool or breeding. Their work centres on pasture or housed herds, calving or lambing, milking routines and the movement of animals between fields and buildings. Poultry producers form a separate grouping because chickens, ducks, turkeys and other birds involve different housing, lighting, feeding and disease control, and because egg and meat production follow faster, more tightly controlled cycles. Apiarists and sericulturists form another distinct grouping: beekeepers manage colonies, hives, swarming and honey harvest, while sericulturists raise silkworms for silk. The animals are smaller, but the knowledge is no less specialised, since colony health, forage timing and silk production each follow their own rules.
What happens to producers who do not fit those three kinds?
ISCO-08 includes a residual grouping for animal producers not elsewhere classified. That grouping catches specialist animal production that does not match livestock and dairy, poultry, or bees and silkworms, such as producers of other farmed animals kept mainly for sale. Residual groupings are a normal part of a classification, not a dumping ground for awkward cases. They exist so that a complete system can cover real work without forcing it into a neighbouring group where it does not belong. A residual grouping should only be used when the main animal work genuinely falls outside the named groupings, after the main tasks of the job have been considered as a whole.
How does mixed farming change the picture?
When a job combines substantial crop growing with substantial animal production, ISCO-08 treats it as mixed crop and animal production rather than as animal production alone. The distinction protects the meaning of both groups. A dairy producer who grows feed crops for the herd is still an animal producer if animals dominate the job and crops mainly support them. A producer who devotes a large share of time, land and skilled attention to market crops as well as to animals is a mixed producer, because neither side is merely supporting the other. That balance test, rather than the presence of any crop at all, decides the grouping. It also explains why mixed producers appear as their own grouping within the same market-oriented agricultural family, alongside crop growers and animal producers, instead of being split between them.
Which nearby work is not animal production?
Veterinary professionals and veterinary technicians are not animal producers, because their main work is diagnosis, treatment and technical animal health support across many holdings, not production on one holding. Slaughterhouse and meat processing workers belong with craft and related trades or with plant and machine operation, depending on their tasks, because their work begins after production. Farm managers are classified by management responsibility for the enterprise as a whole. Keeping those boundaries clear matters for statistics: if every person who touches an animal were counted as a producer, the count would mix production, health care, processing and management into one misleading total.
Sources checked
Back to the Major Group 6: Skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers group or browse all occupations.