Posts

Posted on

How endangered are Shropshire sheep?

Shropshire sheep breeders
Shropshire sheep breeders, and their sheep. Photo from http://bit.ly/sFGklu

You may have seen stories in the past week or so of a flock of Shropshire sheep that authorities in Canada have threatened with destruction. The sheep belong to Montana Jones, who raises them at her Wholearth Farm, near Hastings in Peterborough. Five years ago she sold a ewe to a farmer in Alberta, and that sheep has been diagnosed with scrapie. As a result, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency wants to destroy other animals from the same flock who are infected or suspected of being infected.

One problem for Montana Jones is that the test “is only about 85% accurate”. So the sheep that tested positive may not have scrapie, although I have no idea what that 85% figure actually means. False positives? False negatives? What?

It is a long time since I last had to get my ahead around scrapie, the risks to humans (it is not “mad sheep disease”), the different breed susceptibilities, and the different approaches to eradication. All of those are important issues, I am sure. What concerns me about Montana Jones’ case is whether the appeal to the rarity of Shropshire sheep justifies not taking the precaution of slaughtering some of the flock.

Of course it is heart-breaking to lose animals you have lavished care on, especially when you feel that the action is not justified. But while Shropshires may be very rare in Canada, with all kinds of historical attachments, they are in pretty reasonable shape elsewhere, for example at their home in the UK. (Here is a wool nut’s view of the UK Rare Breeds Survival Trust’s rankings.) I wonder, too, how much genetic diversity the Canadian flocks represent. Wouldn’t it be cool if someone were able to genemap all the Shropshires around the world, in order to be able to show the CFIA just what we would be losing if they go ahead with their plan to cull half of Montana Jones’ flock?

By all means go ahead and sign the petition to save those Shropshires, but consider, too, that evidence of their genetic importance might just carry more weight.

Posted on

Funding for agrobiodiversity: problem solved

If everyone who depends on a plant-based diet were to contribute just one cent a year to the conservation of agricultural biodiversity, the result would be a fund of $70 million a year. That would conserve an awful lot of agrobiodiversity.

This revolutionary idea is not, I confess, entirely original. It sprang, more or less fully formed, shortly after I read Entertainment Value: Should the Media Pay for Nature Conservation? by Paul Jepson, of Oxford University, and his colleagues, in today’s Science.

Jepson et al. point out that broadcasters make a bunch of money by showing us the wonders of nature and yet they contribute little to its conservation. By the same token, I reckon that people who eat make little contribution to the conservation of the agricultural biodiversity on which their food security, now and in the future, depends.

The devil is in the details, I know, and Jepson et al. have some nifty discussion of those details as they would apply to broadcasters. But think about it. One cent a year. Even if you’re on less than a dollar a day, that ought to be affordable.

Posted on

Talking about FIGS

We’ve blogged here once or twice before about Focused Identification of Germplasm (FIGS). This is a GIS-based strategy pioneered at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas for choosing genebank accessions based on where they were collected, which in many cases seems to yields a significantly improved chance of landing the trait you want. Well, a new paper is out applying the method successfully to wheat stem rust resistance. But a press release on the ICARDA blog also tells us that “the FIGS team is now launching an international consultation to help spread this practice among the global scientific community, and to learn together to further improve the FIGS tool.” If you want to join in, contact Ken Street (k.street AT cgiar.org) at ICARDA.

Posted on

Tracking down White Park cattle

This call for information from Lawrence Alderson at Rare Breeds International just came through on DAD-Net. Minus the link, which I’ve added. Can anyone help?

The White Park is an ancient British breed of cattle. It was recorded at Dynevwr in the reign of Rhodri Fawr at least 1,150 years ago, and anecdotally maybe 1,000 years earlier than that. It is a distinctive long-horned animal, porcelain white with coloured points except for the tail which is white. It now is valued as a heritage breed, noted for its high-quality marbled beef and its efficiency of conversion of coarse herbage. It is endangered but has been exported to several countries including USA, Canada, Australia, Denmark and Germany.

A current project coordinated by Rare Breeds International is studying the degree of divergence between national populations. It already has demonstrated that descendants of cattle exported 50 years ago still have the same DNA profile as the current population in UK. In the course of this research RBI has discovered references in the twentieth century (1930s to 1990s) to White Park animals (also referred to as Park or English Park, and Ancient White Park in North America) in several zoological gardens in Europe, including Copenhagen, Prague, Riga, London and Berlin. We are interested to pursue further this thread of research to explore the possibility that the White Park was found more widely in zoological gardens. We request anyone with relevant information to contact RBI at rbisecretariat@mail.com and will be most grateful for your assistance.