Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
where, in any given market, the quantity of a
product demanded by consumers does not equate
to supply. For example, the public may over-
whelmingly support the concept of cage-free
poultry production, but the market does not
respond because many consumers are unwilling
to pay the additional costs associated with this
production system. Studies show that market
prices do not fully reflect the value people place
on animal welfare. In general, peoples' opinions,
values, beliefs and concerns with public interest
may reflect a desire for a change of agricultural
practices, but most 'consumers' (reflecting peo-
ple's own interest in the market) only inciden-
tally buy environmental and animal friendly
products. The use of market prices as a sole
measure of value will therefore underestimate
the interest in improved animal welfare. As with
MV, values placed on improvements in animal
welfare will vary among different markets and
are likely to be higher in locations with food suf-
ficiency than in those without.
One approach to addressing this problem is
to add 'non-market' value (NMV) to the selec-
tion index to consider non-monetary value
placed on animal welfare or environmental con-
cerns (Olesen
et al
., 2000). In that case, the
breeding goal (H) is a function of both MV and
NMV values:
incentives for breeding companies to produce
animals with improved animal welfare will be
low. In the absence of a new market driver to
incentivize the adoption of breeding for improved
welfare, companies who focus on low heritabil-
ity welfare traits may lose market share to com-
panies that focus on high heritability production
traits with a high MV.
In selection index theory, the MV reflects
future prices and costs, about which there is
inevitable uncertainty. However, many func-
tional traits are valuable under all future prices
and so their inclusion in BO is likely to be benefi-
cial, both from an economic and animal welfare
perspective. What is less certain is what relative
emphasis should be placed on different social and
animal welfare traits as societal norms are unpre-
dictable and can change over time. The term
future market value (FMV) is used to describe a
value that is not linked to current market forces.
Breeding companies may incorporate traits with
a FMV into their BO in anticipation that consum-
ers will demand a certain level of animal welfare
in the future. Examples include a cattle breeding
company GENO that proactively put selection
emphasis on health and fertility traits of
Norwegian red dairy cattle many years ago, and
sheep breeders in Australia and New Zealand
who include resistance to internal parasites in
their BO (Nielsen
et al
., 2011). However, this deci-
sion has direct negative economic consequences
as placing greater emphasis on traits that do not
contribute to profit at the current time slows
genetic progress in traits that do, such as produc-
tion traits. An indirect economic consequence of
including additional traits in an FMV is higher
recording costs to get accurate phenotypes for
the additional traits in order to allow selection to
be performed on them.
If the livestock sector is to meet the desire of
the world's population for animal protein pro-
duced in a sustainable manner while ensuring
food safety, animal welfare and the mainte-
nance of rare and specialist breeds, the rate of
genetic gain is going to have to accelerate mark-
edly. There are a number of technologies that
can be used to modify the variables that contrib-
ute to the selection response. In the following
section, each of these components will be dis-
cussed in turn, with specific examples to empha-
size the interplay between animal breeding and
sustainability.
H = (MV
1
EBV
1
+ . . . + MV
n
EBV
n
)
+ (NMV
1
EBV
1
+ . . . +NMV
n
EBV
n
).
The principle behind this approach is that when
defining BO for sustainable production, the
selection response should be based on MV value,
and then a NMV added for traits with unaccep-
table selection responses. While MV can be
derived mathematically based on the contribu-
tions of traits to profit, NMV can be derived
using methods such as stated preference tech-
niques (consumers choose between products
with various quality traits) and choice experi-
ments (which are based on individual's will-
ingness to pay for a specific product). Such
approaches require decisions to be made about
whether farmers and/or consumers should bear
the NMV costs of improving traits related to ani-
mal welfare and other social concerns, or
whether society should cover some of the losses,
e.g. through regulations and or taxes in the form
of government subsidized breeding programmes
(Nielsen
et al
., 2011). Without subsidies, the
