September 4, 2007
Dependence on narrow range of animal breeds causing extinction in others
Over-reliance on imported breeds of farm animals is putting other animals in poor countries at risk of extinction, researchers warned on Monday (Sep 3).
Researchers are calling for the urgent creation of livestock gene banks as the animal breeding industry consolidates and producers focus on just the highest yielding species.
The high milk-yielding Holstein-Friesian cows, egg-laying white Leghorn chickens and fast-growing large white
pigs is causing the loss of one breed on average every month, UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) scientists say.
Valuable breeds are disappearing at an alarming rate, said Carlos Sere, director-general of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) based in Nairobi.
Stressing the urgency to set up a gene bank in places such as Africa, Sere said the true value of an existing breed may not be known until it is already gone.
Dr. Sere is keynote speaker at a major conference on Monday on animal genetic resources in Interlaken, Switzerland.
The ILRI says 90 per cent of cattle in industrialized countries come from only six very tightly defined breeds.
Farmers are increasingly abandoning traditional animals in favour of higher yielding stock.
Sere points to northern Vietnam where local pig breeds accounted for nearly three-quarters of the sow population in 1994, but dropped to just a quarter currently.
While these breeds offer short-term benefits, they may not be able to cope with unpredictable changes in foreign environments or disease outbreaks, scientists said.
The breeds most at risk are in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and he proposed steps such as encouraging farmers to maintain a variety of indigenous stock and setting up gene banks.
While the US, Europe, China, India and South America have well-established gene banks actively preserving regional livestock diversity, gene banks are largely absent in Africa, a region with the richest diversity on Earth.
