Category: Livestock

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Threats to animal genetic resources being discussed

DAD-Net, which is hosted by the Animal Genetic Resources Group of FAO, is organizing an e-conference “Analysing threats to domestic animal genetic resources.” It will run 4-25 May and…

…[i]nput from the e-conference will be used to fine tune and finalize a document that will be circulated via DAD-Net, and potentially made available to the Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.

A background document has been circulated and will form the basis of the discussion. It consists of a summary of responses from 107 subscribers from 55 countries to a questionnaire survey to identify threats to animal genetic resources. The headline finding is that by far the main danger to animal genetic resources worldwide are “economic and market driven threats.” Click on the thumbnail below to see the breakdown by agro-ecological zone.

threats
You know, I don’t recall a similar e-conference ever happening for crops. Why not, I wonder? These animal people are so much more Web 2.0. Anyway, I look forward to blogging about the main findings of the discussion when they come out.

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Tahr protected, but wild carob?

WWF is announcing the establishment of a national park in the United Arab Emirates for the Arabian Tahr. Tahr are wild goats, but I think perhaps it may be pushing it to describe them as livestock wild relatives. Maybe a livestock expert will tell us.

In any case, the Arabian Tahr does share a habitat with at least one crop wild relative, Ceratonia oreothauma ssp. oreothauma. I believe that’s the only other species in the carob genus. I’ve actually collected the damn thing in Oman, and not at all easy it was too. But was an opportunity missed of making this a joint livestock-and-crop-wild-relative protected area?

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Swine flu roundup

As the numbers keep mounting, it is worth recalling where it all started. The epicentre of the swine flu outbreak seems to be the village of La Gloria in Veracruz. The Times has been there, of course: ((And also The Guardian, to be fair.))

Residents of La Gloria have long complained about the clouds of flies that are drawn the so-called “manure lagoons” created by such mega-farms, known in the agriculture business as Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs).

But they may or may not be behind the outbreak. In any case, CAFOs seem to be very different to the more traditional methods of pig rearing to be found in Mexico. The area is one of high density of production:

pig-production

No word on which of the nine or so pig breeds recorded from Mexico are involved.

LATER: GRAIN has its say. And New Scientist.

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Cattle domestication

I was going to write about some recent papers on the domestication of cattle myself, but things got a bit hectic and I didn’t find time. I did, however, find Razib’s post at Gene Expression, and I commend it to you. Of course there’s a lot in there about the genes for milk production, and some worrying nonsense about using genome information to breed better cattle or, to put it another way “accelerating livestock genetic improvement for milk and meat production”. Breeders making use of super-sires and super-ovulating cows have already done a pretty good job of reducing the diversity of extant cattle, and I for one am not convinced by the need for ever more efficient use-once-then-dispose-of milk machines. But I haven’t read the papers, so I can’t comment further. I am intrigued, however, by this statement, quoted by Razib:

Domestication and artificial selection appear to have left detectable signatures of selection within the cattle genome, yet the current levels of diversity within breeds are at least as great as exists within humans.

If we’re not suffering from having passed through genetic narrows, maybe cattle aren’t either. Maybe they’re just suffering.