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ADS Project

This project which involves unique collaboration between major players in the beef and sheep breeding sector,- including major breed societies, the major UK beef and sheep performance recording agency and the main provider of livestock breeding technical consultancy - aims to address the issue of increasing competitiveness and pressure on beef and sheep producers by making it much easier to

1. access and use objective information,
2. to better tailor breeding decisions to market requirements and
3. to market their breeding stock more effectively.

The project aims to assist farmers in identifying and then marketing improved breeding stock more effectively. This will be achieved by expansion of a pedigree database recently developed collaboratively by BASCO Data Ltd. (a holding company owned by the three breed societies represented in this application), linking this to other relevant UK databases, and developing tools and disseminating knowledge to enable wide and effective use of these data. A key part of this will be providing owners and purchasers of pedigree and non-pedigree beef cattle and sheep with web access to a wide range of information. Field days to promote the use of this pedigree and performance information in breeding and marketing will underpin more efficient and lower cost production of beef and lamb, and of produce more closely aligned to market requirements (e.g. in terms of carcass fatness, conformation, health and welfare-related traits) . By lowering the cost of production through breeding and consequently increasing market competitiveness of the end product, this database can be used as a tool in the promotion of meat products. This will be an important component in maintaining a sustainable beef and sheep meat sector in the future.

The system planned is based on individual producers being able to record information on their animals through a variety of input streams e.g. internet, telephone, post etc. Aggregate data will be extracted periodically for genetic evaluation and the results posted back to the database. These data will also be used for benchmarking. Currently, traits evaluated are mostly production-oriented but in the future more effort will be expended on recording traits that improve survival, maternal traits and those relating to reduced costs such as disease resistance. This will be the first time that data on a large proportion of recorded beef and sheep will be held together in one place providing an opportunity to create a single focal point for beef and sheep improvement. The involvement of Signet as a user of the database means that a majority of the beef sector and the whole of the sheep sector will be influenced by this development. The information on the database will be used by farmers to assist them in selecting animals for their breeding program with the goal of reducing wastage and hence production costs while improving the overall quality of the end product. Raising quality standards will open new markets and make UK producers more competitive in existing markets. An example of the use of this total information package is to produce individual animal and flock/herd performance assessments which could then be benchmarked against others in the system and used by advisors in providing system specific and appropriate advice.

By making the system user-friendly, market-led and more widely available through the use of the internet, its uptake will significantly increase the use of genetic indices resulting in a faster rate of improvement of the national flock/herd for economically important traits. More importantly, this will be the first time that beef and sheep pedigree and performance data will be available over the internet providing real-time access to these important data. This will facilitate improvements in livestock more quickly as a response to market forces as they change and future markets are identified. For example, research is in progress which could identify a number of new approaches to selecting for improved meat eating quality (use of molecular genetic markers; CT scanning). The rapid inclusion and use of such measures, if shown to be successful, would result in UK pedigree breeders being able to create and maintain a competitive advantage in meat eating quality over their competitors from around the world. The database and associated activity will be particularly important as and when genetic markers are identified and need to be applied in breeding programmes. The close cooperation of the stakeholders and Signet is ground-breaking and provides a focus for beef and sheep improvement that historically has been fragmented. This will be the beginning of a move for the Industry to be in control of and assume responsibility for animal improvement.