Livestock

April 28, 2009April 29, 2009

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: ¹

Residents of La Gloria have long complained about the clouds of flies that are drawn the so-called â€œmanure lagoonsâ€ 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.

April 24, 2009April 24, 2009

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.

April 24, 2009April 24, 2009

Nibbles: Aurochs, Medicinal plant, New species, Orchards, Imprecations

Nazi cattle invade Britain. Are they the ones that have been sequenced? I think we should be told.
ICIPE helps Kenyan farmers domesticate hangover cure plant.
New, useless acacia found. No word on who lost it in first place.
Yet another plea to save the effing British orchard.
Hunter-Gatherer-Sculptor. “I got your imprecations right here,” says Jeremy.
Razib rounds up horses.

April 23, 2009April 23, 2009

Nibbes: Nettles, Rivers, Rare species, Library, Afghanistan protected area, Nordic-Baltic-Russian collaboration, Photos, Disease

George Orwell scythes nettles, then seeks uses.
World’s rivers in trouble. Also other wetlands the world over. CWRs to be affected, along with everything else?
Let’s not get too hung up about rarity.

UNESCO launches World Digital Library. Gotta be some agrobiodiversity in there somewhere, surely. Yes indeedy.
Afghanistan’s first national park has some livestock wild relatives!
Circum-Baltic collaboration on genetic resources conservation.
Mongabay.com publishes lots of cool pictures of biodiversity to celebrate Earth Day yesterday. So does The Big Picture, even some vaguely farming ones. And Adam Forbes has just loaded a bunch of photos too. Luigi comments: Why didn’t we do the same for agrobiodiversity?
Tuberculosis and domestication. Not.

April 22, 2009

First cow

What with all the brouhaha over not merely the First Organic Garden but also the First Dog, our chums over at InfoFarm have turned their far-sighted historical eyes on other, more productive, animals that have graced the White House lawns. I have just one piece of advice for Michelle; sheep once destroyed a couple of years worth of pea-breeding for me, and even a small herd of beeves is hard to fence out of a garden.