Cows get pneumonia, or bovine respiratory disease, and it kills more than a million of them each year, making BRD the leading cause of (accidental) death for beef and dairy cattle. That translates to a loss of about $692 Million annually. To combat this loss, the USDA has just invested $9.75 Million in a 5-year project to come up with genomic and management approaches to the BRD problem.
The UC Davis Animal Science research team working on the bovine pneumonia study will receive $2.6 Million of the USDA funds awarded through the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program. UCD team members include:
- Alison Van Eenennaam (animal genomics and biotechnology)
- Cassandra Tucker (animal behavior)
- Terry Lehenbauer (food systems)
- Laurel Gershwin (pathology, microbiology, and immunology)
The larger USDA project is led by Texas A&M Veterinary Medicine professor James Womack, who studies genes for disease resistance in cattle and will use a DNA-based approach to develop diagnostic tests and genetic selection tools in the BRD project. The other four universities involved in the $9.75 Million USDA project are:
- Washington State University
- University of Missouri
- Colorado State University
- New Mexico State University
Also funded recently by the USDA was a $4.9 Million study lead by the University of Missouri (Columbia) professor Jeremy Taylor to improve feed efficiency in beef cattle. His team will do DNA genotyping on 8000 head of cattle to identify which cows are best-equipped naturally to process food most efficiently. This USDA project will also involve researchers at TAMU, Univ of IL, Iowa State, Univ of MN, Univ of NE, and Washington State.
If you are a laboratory science supplier and would like to meet researchers, purchasing agents, lab managers, and other industry reps to the life sciences, plan to exhibit at one of Biotechnology Calendar's BioResearch Product Faire™ Events nation-wide, including the animal science universities that have recently received USDA funding:
- Sacramento BioResearch Product Faire™ event at the UC Davis Sacramento medical campus June 15, 2011
- Texas A&M University BioResearch Product Faire™ event at the College Station campus (next event in 2012)
- Washington State BioResearch Product Faire™ event on the Pullman campus October 25, 2011
- Ft. Collins BioResearch Product Faire™ Front Line events at the Colorado State University campuses, Ft. Collins and Foothills Campus, June 20-21, 2011
- Urbana-Champaign BioResearch Product Faire™ event at the University of Illinois campus, May 11, 2011
- Minneapolis BioResearch Product Faire™ event at the University of Minnesota campus July 28, 2011
