8:00 am - 11:00 am • Flagstaff 4-5 Rooms
NCBA Beef Production Research Committee
Jim Bradford, Chair; Connee Quinn, Vice Chair

In the second day of committee meetings during the 2004 Cattle Industry Annual Convention and Trade Show, members of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) Beef Production Research Committee met to discuss top research priorities and their effects on beef producers, as well as how research efforts fit into governmental regulations.

Many committee members agreed that research efforts should not only focus on current available research methods, but also those forms of research and technology that have not been used — to look beyond the expected problem and identify potential issues.

Marcus Kehrli, Jr., researcher at the National Animal Disease Center (NADC) in Ames, Iowa, spoke about the benefits of immune modulators — using proteins rather than or in addition to antibiotics to prevent disease. He said animals spend a lot of energy fighting disease-causing pathogens. According to Kehrli’s presentation, as animals continually fight severe infection, energy requirements go up, and protein is lost.

“As a farm boy, I’m thinking that’s (losing) money in my pocket,” Kehrli said. “Although in-feed antibiotics are recommended to help maintain a healthy animal, fear and government regulations restrict their usage.”

He said ideal immune modulators work to restore dysfunctional immune systems, requiring time (days) to restore impaired immune capacities. “Immune modulators reduce episodes of clinical disease by mounting more rapid immune responses.”

In conclusion, Kehrli reported that with more research, immune modulators could reduce disease, create a food safety advantage and/or reduce antibiotic usage.

Jurgen Richt, also a veterinary medical officer at the NADC explained research conducted at the Ames center on Dec. 23-24, 2003. He presented laboratory findings of the Washington case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) announced Dec. 23, 2003.

He said now Agricultural Research Service (ARS) researchers should:

• develop a sensitive and specific anti-mortem test;

• determine the pathogenesis of BSE;

• develop a method of inactivating the BSE agent;

• determine if different strains of BSE exist and if they behave similarly;

• conduct interspecies transmission and studies as with other transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) agents;

• develop accurate and enhanced rapid methods of agent detection at necropsy (on carcass and meat);

• develop enhanced rapid methods of agent detection outside of the host (environmental contamination); and

• investigate whether host genetics play a role in susceptibility or resistance to BSE infection.

“No one can expect a cheap and fast solution to this,” Richt said, noting the need for different technologies and resources.

Steve Kappes, director of the Meat Animal Research Center (MARC), reviewed national priorities of MARC, including research in genetics/genomics, physiology and meat quality. Genomics research being developed at the center could improve selection for carcass traits and beef quality as well as improve cattle reproduction using comparative mapping — comparing livestock genomes to the human genome since it has similar functions in humans. By identifying genetic traits and by mapping the cattle genome, cattlemen could use the information in the future to improve management and selection tools.


— Crystal Albers