Association for the Advancement of Animal Breeding and Genetics Conference: Animal production changes likely

Animal breeding is part of the solution to some of the challenges animal production will face in the future, according to Denmark-based Danish Agriculture and Food Council senior scientist Mark Henryon. These challenges include community concerns for the environment, climate and animal welfare. Mr Henryon spoke at the Association for the Advancement of Animal Breeding and Genetics Conference on Thursday, July 27, at the University of Western Australia where he said his discussion was directed at opportunity and a call to action. “My talk fits into the theme of the conference — ‘Animal breeding at the crossroads’,” he said. He said if the future of animal production was challenged, an evidence-based vision from the industry would be required. Mr Henryon said currently, animal breeding aimed to improve desirable traits by ranking animals — selecting the best and avoiding in-breeding. “That’s not going to change, what may change is our direction of selection,” he said. “Selecting the composition of traits to ease community concerns. “Animal production has a future but it will probably have to change a bit.” He said there needed to be clear signals from the Government and community to make those changes. “We have the skills to make those changes, we just have to do it safely,” Mr Henryon said. “Animals provide high-quality protein — people have to eat, they are efficient biomass converters and they utilise land that is unsuitable for other parts of food production, plus they are deeply embedded in cultures and societies around the world. “The problem was that all those benefits came with costs.” Mr Henryon said animal production used land, water and energy — it degrades the eco systems, encourages deforestation and emits greenhouse gases and it rears animals in captivity — issues the industry has to deal with. “Provided people have food in their stomachs and we don’t go to war, then animal production will be expected to change to cope with the costs associated with it,” he said. “If we go to war or there is famine, then all the bets are off. “Change was essential to ease community concerns and for farmers to keep a license to produce.” He said governments around the world were reacting to these concerns, by introducing legislation, consensus and penalties to balance the benefits of animal production with those costs that are associated with it. “It’s happening — New Zealand is talking about a levy on greenhouse gases emitted by livestock, Belgium is halving nitrogen emissions by reducing livestock numbers and Germany is ending the cage age,” Mr Henryon said. “Denmark during COVID shut down meat production overnight, it would be equivalent of shutting down wool production in Australia.” He dosent think there would be radical changes. “We need to expand our definition of profit and expand it to include these incentives and penalties that will ease the concerns of what the community is dealing with,” Dr Henryon said. “If you’re a producer that is confronted with these incentives and penalties, you will highly likely to change to a production system to cope with any imposed legislation and to pursue introduced incentives and avoid penalties.” He said cattle, sheep and organic pig production systems were all infringning on community concerns to some degree. “Sheep are not too bad on environmental impact and climate, but they have some animal welfare issues,” Mr Henryon said. “Change could involve some new species like insects and micron organisms that are now part of the rage and they could be part of the animal production landscape — they are efficient and they can use up waste.” He said animals were part of the solution with better genetics to perform and maximise profit in future production systems. “We need to change our breeding objections and identify the traits according to their importance,” Mr Henryon said. “There will be changes, but not so dramatic — I imagine the breeding traits of the future will be many of the traits we are currently breeding for — they all impact production efficiency. “If we improve growth rate and reduce feed intake, we reduce the amount of resources it takes to produce a unit of product.” He said production efficiency had a direct impact on environment, climate and animal welfare. “Some traits in the future may have more economical impact then they are now,” Mr Henryon said. “If a trait risks shutting down an industry then that trait has an finite value — there is a challenge to work out which traits have got more license to produce value. “Some traits could risk government legislations, community boycott and industries’ closure.” He said change was certain and governments and communities needed to be involved to indicate breeding incentives and penalties at the producer level. “Breeders need strong signals to be part of the change,” Mr Henryon said. “The industry is good at ranking animals, using sophisticated genetic models, phenotype strategies and genetic technology to make faster and faster gains. “But we need to make these fast gains safely and responsibly and for in-breeding control, we need lots of measurements to create traits that are reliable and allocate selection pressure. “We need monitoring and surveillance systems and resistance to global monopolisation of animal genetic resources.”