Sorry, that was a point from Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. I should have just listed the cow, horse, sheep, goat, and pig.
Those are the basic examples of the few animals which are docile herbivores, breeding in captivity, growing to a large, breeding adult in a couple years, and which live in social groups that accept humans at the top of the hierarchy. Building a society with protein and labor from cows is much easier than, say, harnessing turkeys. There are a billion cows on the planet, but if human society grinds to a halt and we stop artificially inseminating them and running the feed plots those species might not survive.
The list is generally cows, pigs, goats, sheep and horses. But it's not a rigid list; sometimes goats and sheep get merged, and sometimes chickens get added.
Can you expand on what you mean by this? I’m not finding much through search.