Livestock News & Views

DNA technology promises to make food traceability more precise and reliable and boost consumer confidence, according an industry executive.

IdentiGEN’s DNA TraceBack allows the food industry to trace whole muscle cuts from the grocery store shelf to the individual animal. Genetic technology can help processors issue more targeted food safety recalls. Sturgeon Valley Pork, an Alberta processor, uses the technology to assure customers that their products are premium Alberta pork. DNA traceability can also be used for ground meat as long as reference samples from individual carcasses can be collected. But implementing DNA traceability for ground meat produced in large processing plants is more complex.

A sire evaluation project is yielding promising results for beef producers who want to improve their herds.

Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development has partnered with IdentiGen Canada Ltd. to study which bulls produce the best calves. In 2010, they began collecting DNA from bulls and calves on two Alberta ranches. The project expanded to include a third ranch in 2011. The DNA linked calves to the bulls, and the early results immediately caught participating ranchers’ interests.

“What we did see right away, and we were told that we would, is bulls that did not sire any calves,” says Jim Hansen, livestock business development specialist with Alberta Agriculture. “They would have passed the semen test, everything would have been good, but they sired no calves.”

More than 600 delegates from Canada, the United States, Europe, and Asia are in Alberta this week for the annual Banff Pork Seminar. Delegates have plenty to chew on with this year’s theme, “Feeding Tomorrow’s World.”

One of the plenary session speakers this year is Greg BeVier. BeVier is responsible for livestock grants at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the focus of his talk was livestock production’s role in lifting people out of poverty and hunger.

A new research project, conducted by the Canadian Simmental Association, aims to link beef genomics to meat and carcass quality.

“We’re looking at all the major derivatives or indicators of both carcass quality and meat quality. So grading information will be correlated as well as tenderness, all those traits,” says Sandy Russell, project manager.

Canadian researchers and the dairy industry have set their sights set on reducing Johne’s disease in cow herds.

Johne’s disease is widespread within the dairy industry. Ontario’s Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs estimates that 20 to 30 percent of dairy herds have cows infected with Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP), the bacteria that causes Johne’s disease.  Alberta Milk puts that number at 50 per cent or higher.