One-Fifth of Local Livestock Risks Extinction
A study released Monday called “The State of the World’s Animal Genetic Resources”, conducted by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), found that an over-reliance on some breeds of livestock imported from the United States and Europe, including the high-milk-yielding Holstein-Friesian cows, egg-laying White Leghorn chickens, and fast-growing large white pigs, is causing the loss of at least one indigenous livestock breed a month.
Since research for the report began in 1999, 2,000 local breeds have been identified as at risk.
An example of over-reliance on a particular breed is the black-and-white Holstein-Friesian dairy cow, which is now found in 128 countries and in all regions of the world. Moreover, 90 percent of cattle in industrialised countries come from only six very tightly defined breeds.
The report, which the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and other research groups also contributed to, surveyed farm animals in 169 countries and found that nearly 70 percent of the world’s entire remaining unique livestock breeds are found in developing countries. The findings were presented to over 300 policy makers, scientists, breeders, and livestock keepers at the First International Technical Conference on Animal Genetic Resources, being held in Interlaken, Switzerland from Sep. 3-7.
In order to prevent more breeds from going extinct, the FAO is in the process of leading inter-governmental processes to better manage these resources. But the negotiations and political processes will take several years to bear fruit. “And as we speak, breeds are disappearing. So we need to act now,” Dr. Carlos Seré, director general of ILRI, told IPS.
In response to these findings, scientists from the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), ILRI’s supporting organisation, have called for the rapid establishment of gene banks to conserve the sperm and ovaries of key animals critical for the global population’s future survival.
“This is the first step,” said Seré, who gave the keynote speech on the opening day of the Interlaken conference.
“In the U.S., Europe, China, India, and South America, there are well-established gene banks actively preserving regional livestock diversity,” said Seré. “Sadly, Africa has been left wanting and that absence is sorely felt right now because this is one of the regions with the richest remaining diversity and is likely to be a hotspot of breed losses in this century.”
Seré is calling for the rapid establishment of gene banks in Africa as one of four practical steps to better characterise, use, and conserve the genetic basis of farm animals for the livestock production systems around the world. “The cost of setting up gene banks is not too high. It’s more critical to get institutional support. So this can certainly be achieved in the poorest countries in Africa as well,” Seré explained.
Livestock conservation is important, given that industrialised countries built their economies significantly through livestock production and there is no indication that developing countries will be any different. Worldwide, one billion people are involved in animal farming and 70 percent of the rural poor depend on livestock as an important part of their livelihoods.
“For the foreseeable future,” Seré said, “farm animals will continue to create means for hundreds of millions of people to escape absolute poverty.”
Conserving local breeds in the developing world is crucial also because animals in those countries need to adapt to the environment, not the other way around. “If there is no veterinary care, local breeds can survive but not exotic or imported breeds,” he said.
For example, Uganda’s indigenous Ankole cattle could face extinction within 20 years because they are being rapidly supplanted by Holstein-Friesians, which produce much more milk. However, during a recent drought, farmers who had Ankole cattle were able to walk them long distances to get to water sources while those who had traded the Ankole for imported breeds lost entire herds.
Scientists and conservationists alike agree that all livestock populations can’t be saved. But ILRI has helped lay the groundwork for prioritising livestock conservation efforts in developing regions. Over the past six years, it has built a detailed database, called the Domestic Animal Genetic Resources Information System (DAGRIS), containing research-based information on the distribution, characteristics and status of 669 breeds of cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and chickens indigenous to Africa and Asia.
Sere’s proposed four-step plan is a snapshot of what the FAO is suggesting as a plan of action. Apart from establishing gene banks, he has called for the use of market-incentives and good public policy that make it in the farmer’s self-interest to maintain diversity. Greater mobility of livestock breeds across national borders and advanced genomic and geographical mapping techniques to predict which breeds are best suited to which environments are the other steps recommended to tackle this problem.
FAO’s Assistant Director-General Alexander Müller told the conference that climate change also posed a significant threat to livestock breeds.
“In this situation, the world cannot simply take a business-as-usual, wait-and-see attitude,” said Müller. “Climate change means that we are entering a period of unprecedented uncertainty and crisis, which will affect every country.”
“The options that these resources offer for maintaining and improving animal production will be of enormous significance in the coming decades,” he said. “Climate change and the emergence of new and virulent livestock diseases highlight the importance of retaining the capacity to adapt our agricultural production systems.”
© 2007 Inter Press Service
The best thing is if they go extinct.Meat eating is a blight on the planet. Waste of water, waste of crops, waste of amazon rain forest, a major polluter(both water and air), contributer to global warming, major contributer to wildlife extinction, incubator of new diseases(SARS, bird flu), and impossible to justify in terms of wasted resources that could go to humans and the absolute sadism and cruelty towards the victim species.
Domestication isnt natural(unless war and rape is as well)-and going extinct is better than maintaining the status quo.
Thank goodness someone is paying attention to this -it’s one of the most important, and terrifying issues that we face. These breeds are so important, and will become even more so. It’s also necessary to note that, as Slow Food likes to say, “we need to eat them to save them”.
wow, kelmer, you are so misinformed. A well-managed, grass-based, meat farm is ecologically sound and morally just. Cows that graze in small herds on lush pastures, (which they fertilize themselves!) on small farms don’t pollute at all. In fact, they improve the environment. I also assume you’re of the type that likes to say that we shouldn’t grow corn and grain for animals when it could feed people. you’re only half right. You shouldn’t feed grain to cows, they’re not biologically engineered to eat it at all, and so that IS a waste of a resource. The answer, however, is not to ship grain all over the world to the starving, it’s to let cows eat what they’re meant to (grass), and to support developings in their OWN food system, not our imposed distribution system. These breeds are the life-force of the people around the globe. PEOPLE will go extinct if these breeds do.
You might want to read The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan.
Visit Mr. Pollan’s site at http://www.michaelpollan.com/omnivore.php for reviews and synopsis. I was told, but haven’t verified, that it’s required reading of all incoming freshmen at Holy Cross University.
Biodiversity means more stable ecosystems that decrease entropy (waste).
Kelmer, “impossible to justify in terms of wasted resources that could go to humans” Do you say this because humans are the only thing worth cultivating on the planet? We are in fact domesticated animals too! And there are far too many of us, probably about a 100 to 1000 times too many. With modern technology, every person on the planet could have a higher standard of living than anybody has known before if there weren’t so many of us. Overpopulation IS the number one problem from which all the others stem.
read the part about the drought resistant cattle surviving while whole herds of supposedly superior (inbred) cattle died. did you ever read about the irish potato famine? the irish became dependent on one type of potato, which then developed blight.
this article assumes that you know that the world’s climate is in process of changing. we need more diversity–not less–to cope with the changes we cannot affect except ever so slowly by reducing our output of greenhouse gases.
I have been a vegetarian for years, mainly because of cruel and unnatural factory farming procedures. But in nature, all the ruminants are prey animals and few - whether deer or cattle - would die a natural death. We have created a completely unsustainable system. A hundred years from now, our descendants and the inheritors of this mess will probably be engaged in subsistence agriculture and barter, and many of them will probably become nomadic and follow the herds. Better preserve those archaic breeds…………………
mary lou wrote: ” did you ever read about the irish potato famine? the irish became dependent on one type of potato, which then developed blight.”
Yes but the question that has to be asked is, why did they have only potatoes to eat? Ireland exported food in great quantity through the entire ‘famine.’ You might call it an early form of globalization.
So true, Greenman. We are at .5% population increase here in the U.S., but the African population is exploding. We can only hope that the evangelical crowd hasn’t infested the African continent too much with their tired abstinence diatribe and that Africa’s secular social engineers are instead employing a more common-sense methodology of family planning and harmony with ecology.
As for Kelmer’s thoughts, I am also a vegetarian but have learned that diverse livestock is still an important cog in the machinery beyond whether or not we eat the animal flesh.
Ken Nuti,
Medford, MA
Extinction is the end of the line for all sorts of things including the banana. Loss of biodiversity prevents species from adapting to to predators that are not subject to the same environmental stressors. That is what is happening to hundreds of species in response to monoculture practices.
When one species is removed from an ecosystem it results in environmental stress. Scientific management is almost as bad because they are so far behind the problems they helped to create.
The Irish potato famine is relevant here, although as adrienrain points out there were also issues of oppressive economic practices visited upon the Irish that led to the collapse of the foodshed.
The US experienced a similar problem due to over-reliance on a single strain of an important food crop. In 1970, corn blight devastated crops around the country but particularly in the Southeast. The only reason we still grow corn in large quantities today is that the hybrid producers were able to go back to the landraces and heirloom strains of Latin America and breed strains that were resistant to blight.
The lesson of the potato famine and the corn blight is that we cannot afford to let heirloom strains of important food crops go extinct, because in their genetic heritage lies the versatility to survive tomorrow’s climate and disease pressures.
Kelmer is right about meat-eating being a problematic choice, but only up to a point. The meat most Americans (and to a lesser extent those in other industrialized countries) consume is grown in incredibly wasteful and unhealthy ways; 16 pounds of grain and soybeans edible to human beings (and not what cattle’s bodies have evolved to digest) go into every pound of beef.
But there are ecosystems where the soil is too delicate for crops, but that ruminants, provided they are not allowed to overgraze, can use to convert grasses that are not edible for humans into edible meat. This is particularly true in the prairie ecosystems between the Rockies and the Missisippi river, as well as other steppe, prairie and savannah ecosystems worldwide.
In addition to The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I would also highly recommend Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, for a much more in-depth discussion of food diversity issues.
If I am not incorrect, many cultures use their livestock for “renewable” products such as milk, wool, and work etc. rather than solely for meat. Makes for a more ecological approach I would expect.
Nothing about the cultures that affect the rationality? Religions that ban contraceptives? Conservatives that advocate larger armies? The Quiverfull movement?
We’re an insane and cancerous species, as we are. As we are.
Yes, we must change, culturally and biologically.
Eugenics. Euculturation.
Becky and Bobbi both make excellent points. Kelmer, being a vegetarian in the US or the EU is a relatively easy choice. Lots of farmers markets, co-ops, and natural food stores. In third world countries, they don’t have those choices for a number of ovious reasons. The value of a cow is not in its meat. They plow the land, grind the grain, pull the wagons, and provide food, clothing, and tools. And there HAS to be diversity of species AND varieties for the whole thing to work from an ecological point of view.
What this article is promoting is no different than saving seeds. I makes a lot of sense.
By the way Bobbi, better hope there isn’t another corn blight. Many, if not most, of the hundreds of varieties of corn developed over centuries in Mexico have already been contaminated with Monsanto’s GM strains. Hybrids, which don’t breed true, are also a problem.
Rebel farmer– The biggest meat eaters in the world are Americans and Europeans. The rest of the folks need the ox to plow and can’t eat him. Many 3rd worlder’s “meat” are insects–not cows.
Let’s not forget that herding animals consume lots and lots of water that many places on this planet do not have. Let’s not forget the tons and tons of manure that they produce. Eating lots and lots of meat is a luxury, and in fact much of what we do in first world countries is a luxury often at the expense of other people.
Although even though I’m a vegetarian, I believe Mr. Cow has a right to his/her diversity, and should be preserved. You never know. We might kill ourselves off, and they will fill an important link in nature’s natural chain.
Man make’th and man take’th away. Cattle (livestock of the beefy variety) are a hybrid species between oxen, buffalo, yak and God knows what else. They are even splicing human DNA into the bovine DNA in this current era, a true breeding ground for all sorts of domesticated animal borne diseases like mmmmmmmmmmmmmaaaaadddd cow.
So I wonder if extinction is possible for a man made domesticated species. Can we really call it extinction when we are domesticating our livestock to death.
Didn’t we learn anything from Darwin’s natural selection? So, this extinction thing is bad?
Do some research on why American beef is being rejected by other countries before you stop by In-n-out for lunch.
Much of this debate on this thread is depressingly backward rather than progressive. Supposed overpopulation nor meat eating is to blame for the slow and progressive destruction of world agriculture by capitalism. Neither is overconsumption simply the problem. Most of the world does not over-consume.
The problem with capitalism is that it distorts both production and all consumption into a wasteful and anti-ecological manner. Capitalism pillages nature without any regard to the consequences.
I am tired of cultural liberals without any understanding of what’s economically going on taking moralistic and simplistic positions against having ‘too many people’ on the planet, and talking up nonsense about the supposed wrong kind of actions by some individuals ( they are not vegetarian, etc.) There is a lot more going on that just seemingly is completely missed by this shallow line of thought.
wdmax:
Since oxen are cattle castrated as calves, I doubt they figure in many breeding programs.
Since this is related material— I submit for your consideration:
Here are some well known, but thinly published FACTS:
Our atmosphere has weight (mass).
Half the mass is at and below 18,000ft, the rest basically fades to 0 around 70,000ft. It is, of course, densest at sea level and thins out with altitude. No surprise there…
95% of weather (wx) happens at or below 30,000ft, even huge systems like hurricanes which are hundreds of miles wide. Tornadoes and thunder storms rise as high as 50,000ft.
Still OK?
Temperature decreases at a steady rate until reaching -56F or so in the stratosphere (35,000ft+/-).
Most of us have a pretty good handle on horizontal distance—a mile is 5280ft, it’s about a mile to the grocery store, about 3 miles to Walmart, 100 miles to Grandma’s. And so on.
Most of us have been in an airliner and seen the ground from the air. Recall now, or notice next time you’re up, seeing an airport. Perhaps google one. Notice the runways, they are easy to see.
The runways at IAD or LAX or MKC, etc., are over 10,000ft long.
!!! 10,000ft. !!!
Factor that into your visual cortex…
Half of the atmosphere that protects us from cold, dead space is only TWO runway lengths above the surface.
The wx happens only THREE lengths up.
On a clear day you can see 10 miles from a hill or tall building. That’s about 60,000ft.
Look straight up, chums, we’re 60,000ft from space, and six runway lengths from dead cold.
Don’t call environmentalists “alarmists”, call us caring earthlings with nerves of steel trying to bring an urgent situation to the attention of mankind.
Bury that Hummer and join the fun.
Cheers,
snydly