Implications for Breeders

Abstract

Consumers of animal protein in the USA and elsewhere in the world continue to benefit from ongoing cost-reducing breed improvements. Most dramatic of these have been in dairy cattle, where the output per cow has doubled over the past 20 years, so that output is comparable, but herd size is roughly half what it was in the 1960s. In the poultry industry an essentially new product was created with the advent of the “broiler” in the pre-World War II era. Much of these and other less obvious efficiency improvements are attributable to the breeding sector, that group of firms which identifies and combines desirable traits of existing strains to provide new variants that are superior in one or more characteristics. The efficiency of animal agriculture then depends heavily on the functioning of these firms so they assume an importance, and visibility, far in excess of their dollar value of sales.