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European husbandry is dramatically changing in respect to the human-animal interactions. Stockpersons have more and more animals and less and less time to take care of them. Then, farm animals need to be less dependent of direct contact with humans and become less familiar to the human presence and handling. In this paper, we will describe the consequences on such changes on human work and animal production and welfare. From empirical and scientific reports, we will also describe ways to improve the animal behaviour towards humans, using mainly examples developed on farm ungulates. The quality of the handling facilities, the importance of the psychological characteristics of the stockperson and the usefulness of a genetic selection process based also on animal responses to humans will be discussed. Furthermore, we would emphasize the importance of considering the farmers' interactions with their animals as a succession of events that lead to the human-animal relationship. From this perspective, the perceptions of the stockpersons by their farm animals and the mechanism that build these perceptions need to be fully understood. In the different farm species, the existence of imprinting and socialisation processes based on attachment mechanisms is empirically and scientifically discussed since many years. The idea of rapid, durable and efficient effects on latter human-animal interactions is practically very important for stockpersons. However if these phenomenon have been well described in birds and canidae, the amount of valid scientific data is still low in many farm species. Future areas of research will be suggested.
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