Now, livestock as endangered species

The world's first framework convention for halting the extinction of economically important animals is finally in place.

While protection of wild animals has been attracting attention for several years now, the world's first framework convention for halting rapid erosion of breeds of economically important animals, notably livestock, was put in place only last week.

Delegates from 109 countries adopted a global plan of action for animal genetic resources last week at the conclusion of the 1st International Technical Conference on Animal Genetic Resources at Interlaken in Switzerland.

This move is aimed at preventing the extinction of livestock breeds and promoting sustainable use, development and conservation of the animal genetic resources.

At least one livestock breed has been becoming extinct every month during the past 7 years, according to a report on the state of the world's animal genetic resources brought out by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). This means that the genetic characteristics of the animals of these breeds have been lost for ever.

Around 20 per cent of the world's breeds of cattle, goats, pigs, horses and poultry are currently at the risk of extinction, this report points out. Many of these breeds have unique characteristics that may be useful in confronting various kinds of challenges, including that of food security, in the years to come.

The growing demand for meat, milk and eggs has led to heavy reliance on high-output animals that have been intensively bred to supply uniform products, discarding the rest. This has led to rapid spread of large scale commercial livestock production focused on a narrow range of breeds. This constitutes the biggest threat to the world's farm animal diversity, the documents points out.

Since the mid-twentieth century, a few high-performance breeds, usually of European descent, have spread throughout the world, crowding out traditional breeds.

The dominant breeds used in commercial farms include Holstein-Friesian (by far the most widespread breed, reported in at least 128 countries and in all regions of the world) and Jersey cattle; Large White, Duroc and Landrace pigs; Saanen goats; and Rhode Island Red and Leghorn chickens.

"This progressive narrowing of genetic diversity is largely complete in Europe and North America and is now occurring in many developing countries, which had so far retained a large number of their indigenous breeds," the report states. The traits such as resistance to disease or adaptation to climatic extremes could prove fundamental to the food security of future generations. It stressed the need for proper livestock breeding strategies and diversity management.

"Some of the widely used breeds need to be managed more wisely. Among many of these breeds, the within-breed genetic diversity is being undermined by the use of a few highly popular sires for breeding", the FAO says.

The action plan for the livestock protection, adopted at Switzerland, identifies four strategic priority areas: characterisation, inventory and monitoring of trends and risks; sustainable use and development; conservation; and policies, institutions and capacity building.

Besides, it calls for the provision of technical assistance, especially to the developing and transition countries to help them implement the plan. Significantly, the conference also agreed on a mechanism for financing the implementation of the plan which would require substantial resources.

The governments are now strongly committed to implement the global plan and are prepared to mobilise adequate funding, maintains the FAO. The ability of the developing countries to effectively implement their commitments under this plan will depend on the effective provision of funding.