Strategies to promote farm animal welfare in Latin America and their effects on carcass and meat quality traits

Several initiatives, including research and development, increasing stakeholders' awareness and application of legislation and recommendation, have been carried out in Latin America to promote animal welfare and meat quality. Most activities focused on the impact of pre-slaughter conditions (facilities, equipment and handling procedures) on animal welfare and meat quality. The results are encouraging; data from Brazil, Chile and Uruguay showed that the application of the improved pre-slaughter handling practices reduced aggressive handling and the incidence of bruised carcasses at slaughter in cattle and pigs. These outcomes stimulated some to apply animal welfare concepts in livestock handling within the meat production chain as shown by the increasing demand for personnel training on the best. To attend this demand is important to expand local studies on farm animal welfare and to set up (or maintain) an efficient system for knowledge transfer to all stakeholders in the Latin America meat production chains. However, it is clear that to promote the long-term progress in this field is important to deliver practical solutions, assuring that they match the technical and financial conditions of those who are the target of training programs. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Influence of data structure on the estimation of the additive genetic direct and maternal covariance for early growth traits in Nellore cattle

The objective of the present study was to investigate the effect of data structure on estimated genetic parameters and predicted breeding values of direct and maternal genetic effects for weaning weight (WW) and weight gain from birth to weaning (BWG), including or not the genetic covariance between direct and maternal effects. Records of 97,490 Nellore animals born between 1993 and 2006, from the Jacarezinho cattle raising farm, were used. Two different data sets were analyzed: DI_all, which included all available progenies of dams without their own performance; DII_all, which included DI_all + 20% of recorded progenies with maternal phenotypes. Two subsets were obtained from each data set (DI_all and DII_all): DI_1 and DII_1, which included only dams with three or fewer progenies; DI_5 and DII_5, which included only dams with five or more progenies. (Co)variance components and heritabilities were estimated by Bayesian inference through Gibbs sampling using univariate animal models. In general, for the population and traits studied, the proportion of dams with known phenotypic information and the number of progenies per dam influenced direct and maternal heritabilities, as well as the contribution of maternal permanent environmental variance to phenotypic variance. Only small differences were observed in the genetic and environmental parameters when the genetic covariance between direct and maternal effects was set to zero in the data sets studied. Thus, the inclusion or not of the genetic covariance between direct and maternal effects had little effect on the ranking of animals according to their breeding values for WW and BWG. Accurate estimation of genetic correlations between direct and maternal genetic effects depends on the data structure. Thus, this covariance should be set to zero in Nellore data sets in which the proportion of dams with phenotypic information is low, the number of progenies per dam is small, and pedigree relationships are poorly known. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Associations of FASN gene polymorphisms with economical traits in Nellore cattle (Bos primigenius indicus)

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

First polymorphisms in JY-1 gene in cattle (Bos taurus indicus) and their association with sexual precocity and growth traits

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Genetic associations between stayability and reproductive and growth traits in Canchim beef cattle

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Genetic parameters for buffalo milk yield and milk quality traits using Bayesian inference

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)