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:
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:
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: