CONTACT: Julie Navejar

kajam03@tamuk.edu or 361-593-2590

TEXAS A&M-KINGSVILLE PROFESSOR WORKS

TO SAVE GLOBAL LIVESTOCK BREEDS FROM EXTINCTION

KINGSVILLE (October 13, 1999) -- Living in South Texas, it is common to see herds of Santa Gertrudis cattle grazing in pastures or hundreds of pigs and lambs at a county livestock show. But in some places in the world, and even in the United States, some breeds of domesticated livestock are at risk of becoming extinct.

Dr. Steven Lukefahr, professor of animal and wildlife sciences at Texas A&M University-Kingsville, has just returned from a conference involving fellow livestock geneticists in Rome where they devised a set of guidelines geared to help 186 countries worldwide combat this problem.

The meeting was organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Lukefahr was the only scientist invited from the United States to join the group of 33 geneticists from 26 countries. Each scientist has vast international experience.

"There are about 5,000 different breeds of domestic livestock in the world today. Unfortunately, nearly every day, we lose a breed," Lukefahr said. "We lose livestock breeds for a lot of different reasons. For example, in some countries where there is war, soldiers sometimes use animals grazing in a field for target practice. Drought is another big killer of animals, and genetic erosion or displacement (replacing a native breed with an exotic breed) can cause a breed to disappear.

"In some cases, ranchers or scientists brought new breeds of livestock to their region only to have them succumb to harsh conditions of their new environment while neglecting the native breed until it too became endangered or even extinct." This is known as genetic conservation, which is covered in Lukefahr's international animal agriculture course.

By contrast, the commercial white turkey that is mass-produced on factory farms in North America and Europe has been genetically engineered for a large, meaty breast, but it is no longer able to naturally breed on its own. This breed accounts for 99 percent of all turkeys in the United States today. It would become extinct in one generation without human assistance in the form of artificial insemination.

Lukefahr said 30 percent of the world's breeds of livestock are endangered or extinct. Many of these are in developing countries. However, some are in the United States, including the Gulf Coast Native sheep, which shows remarkable genetic parasite resistance and adaptation to the high heat and humidity of their native habitat.

Also endangered is the American Mammoth Jack stock, which is unique to North America. It is known as one of the finest mule-producing ass breeds in the world. However, its numbers have dropped to only a few hundred as machines have replaced animals in agriculture.

Goats and sheep were the first animals to be domesticated about 11,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent of Southwest Asia between the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf. The holstein breed of dairy cattle was developed in Europe over 1,100 years ago.

In Europe, half of all breeds of domestic animals that existed at the turn of the century have become extinct and 43 percent of the remaining breeds are endangered. Genes which make a native breed uniquely useful took Mother Nature thousands of years to create by mutation and also selection by humans.

Lukefahr said many of the breeds in danger are those that are indigenous to certain areas of the world and have adapted themselves over generations to endure extreme environments, tolerate disease well or have high fertility rates. These indigenous breeds can flourish where exotic or imported breeds would perish.

Some animals that are critically endangered are the North Ronaldsay sheep of the Orkney Islands off Northern Scotland that survive exclusively on a diet of seaweed, the Yakut cattle of Northern Siberia that withstand extreme fluctuations of temperature with little management, the Olkuska sheep native to southern Poland that sometimes produce litters of five or six lambs and the Javanese Zebu cattle that are highly fertile, hardy and resistant to tick infestation.

"We worked for five days in small groups to devise recommended policies by which agricultural ministers and livestock geneticists can work to save these endangered animals," Lukefahr said. "Half of us were from developing countries and half from developed countries.

"We all represented areas of speciality within genetics. Mine was rabbit genetics. Our only common ground was the English language and our desire to help save these animal breeds. Each country will use the guidelines we produced to generate their own specific policies.

"We worked together to find ways to help promote world food security. Our existence as humans on this planet depends on such action."

-TAMUK-