Rare livestock breeds facing extinction
An over-reliance on a small proportion of livestock breeds is putting rare drought- and disease-resistant breeds at risk of extinction, according to the world’s first inventory of farm animals.
Worldwide, many farmers and smallholders are shunning local breeds in favour of high-yielding stock imported from industrialised regions such as Europe and the USA, which lack the genetic traits needed to survive in local conditions.
The popularity of breeds of livestock such as the high-yielding Holstein-Friesian cow, the fast-growing white pig, and white leghorn chickens, which have a good egg-laying record, is leading to the loss of an average of one livestock breed every month, according to a report compiled by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
Ninety per cent of cattle in industrialised countries fall into just six breeds, and black and white Holstein-Friesian cows, which originally hail from the Netherlands, are now found in 128 countries. In Uganda, for example, imported cattle breeds are replacing indigenous ankole cattle (above) because farmers are enticed by the prospect of higher meat and milk yields. However, during a recent drought, farmers who had held on to their hardy ankole cattle were able to walk their herds over long distances in search of food and water, while those who had switched to imported breeds lost entire herds.
The UN report, compiled with assistance from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) based in Namibia, Kenya, investigated farm animals in 169 countries. ‘Valuable breeds are disappearing at an alarming rate,’ said Carlos Seré the director general of the ILRI. ‘In many cases we will not even know the true value of an existing breed until it has already gone.’
The report has prompted the ILRI, which works to save specially adapted breeds for food security, environmental sustainability and human development, to call for gene banks to be set up in Africa. The ILRI is also encouraging farmers to stock a variety of indigenous breeds and is using ‘landscape genomics’ to identify and map the best environments for particular breeds.
November 2007
Worldwide, many farmers and smallholders are shunning local breeds in favour of high-yielding stock imported from industrialised regions such as Europe and the USA, which lack the genetic traits needed to survive in local conditions.
The popularity of breeds of livestock such as the high-yielding Holstein-Friesian cow, the fast-growing white pig, and white leghorn chickens, which have a good egg-laying record, is leading to the loss of an average of one livestock breed every month, according to a report compiled by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
Ninety per cent of cattle in industrialised countries fall into just six breeds, and black and white Holstein-Friesian cows, which originally hail from the Netherlands, are now found in 128 countries. In Uganda, for example, imported cattle breeds are replacing indigenous ankole cattle (above) because farmers are enticed by the prospect of higher meat and milk yields. However, during a recent drought, farmers who had held on to their hardy ankole cattle were able to walk their herds over long distances in search of food and water, while those who had switched to imported breeds lost entire herds.
The UN report, compiled with assistance from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) based in Namibia, Kenya, investigated farm animals in 169 countries. ‘Valuable breeds are disappearing at an alarming rate,’ said Carlos Seré the director general of the ILRI. ‘In many cases we will not even know the true value of an existing breed until it has already gone.’
The report has prompted the ILRI, which works to save specially adapted breeds for food security, environmental sustainability and human development, to call for gene banks to be set up in Africa. The ILRI is also encouraging farmers to stock a variety of indigenous breeds and is using ‘landscape genomics’ to identify and map the best environments for particular breeds.
November 2007
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