I recently announced funding for a major genotyping programme for Irish cattle. This programme, which is being run through a strategic public-private partnership model, will enhance the environmental sustainability, health and productivity of Irish beef and dairy herds. To be clear, this is a voluntary genotyping programme, which will be available to both beef and dairy herd owners, over a five-year period. It represents a significant step towards genotyping of the national bovine herd.
In late 2022, I received reports from the Food Vision Dairy and Beef & Sheep Groups on how emissions from both sectors could be reduced, either through direct or enabling measures.
Driving down emissions through targeted breeding strategies featured as a direct impact measure in both reports. The key building block for the breeding strategies referenced in the reports is a national genotyping strategy.
Genotyping involves taking a tissue sample from breeding females and males and building a DNA bank of that data. When new calves are born, they are matched to their sire and dam. If carried out at national scale, genotyping would give the Irish cattle industry 100 percent traceability at the DNA level.
The genetic data collected will be analysed to identify specific traits or characteristics that are important to farmers such as disease resistance, milk or meat production, or fertility. In addition, the information gathered will be used to develop breeding strategies aimed at improving the overall genetic merit of the herd.
Research undertaken by Teagasc and the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation has highlighted the significant benefits that can accrue to Irish farmers and related industries with higher genetic merit herds being more profitable and with a lower carbon footprint.
In addition to improving economic and environmental sustainability, genotyping the national herd will have a number of co-benefits, including:
- providing a unique selling point in terms of traceability, which is important for marketing our quality produce, particularly for international trade; and
- providing greater certainty about the quality of dairy beef calves, with benefits both for the farmers rearing those calves and for calf health and welfare.
In conclusion, traceability is an important aspect of genotyping however it should be noted that this is a voluntary programme which represents a step towards genotyping of the national bovine herd.
