Cl4—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, December 13,1980
Animal ag group urges increase in research
WASHINGTON, DC. -
Agricultural research must
immediately be bolstered
and targeted to meet future
human needs for nutritious,
safe and affordable meat,
milk and eggs.
This was urged by a Task
Force representing
agricultural scientists,
producers and consumers
who also warned that the
store of animal agriculture
research information is
close to being “picked
bare ”
They said more scientific
knowledge is urgently
needed to help maintain and
improve livestock efficiency
and productivity in the face
of increasingly scarce land,
water, energy and other
critical resources.
They said investments in
research and development
“have not kept pace with the
growing demand for animal
products, with problems of
dwindling natural resources,
or with consumer demands
for nutrition and food
safety ”
The Task Force for
Animal Agriculture
Research represents more
than 200 US scientists,
producers and consumers
who worked in
multidisciplinary teams to
identify the most urgent
research needs Their view
of animal agriculture en
compassed human nutation,
food safety, resource con
servation, and public policy,
as well as the traditional
agricultural sciences.
Their recommendations
were released yesterday in
the report, “Animal
Agriculture- Research to
Meet Human Needs in the
21st Century ”
The Task Force was set
up, according to coordinator
Henry Fitzhugh, to “express
the urgency of the need for
support for research
private and public, state and
federal ”
The need was emphasized and lower-priced food,
by US. Department of agricultural research
Agriculture’s scientific particularly benefits low
director, Anson Bertrand income groups,” they added
“The base of fundamental “Food assistance
knowledge from which most programs are targeted to
of us in science are working low income groups which
today is extremely limited must spend about 30 percent
The general public does not of their income for food, as
have the slightest idea how compared to 16 percent for
precarious our position is ” the average U S food buyer
From another perspective, If federal investment in
Sylvan Wittwer, Michigan agricultural research were
Agricultural Experiment to equal only 10 percent of
Station Director, pointed out that spent on food assistance
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that “the U.S. is no longer
the world’s leader in
agricultural research
“The free world has fallen
behind the Soviets, not only
in the arms race, but they
have edged us out in
research investments
relating to the production
and stability of our food
supplies ”
“Traditionally, animal
producers and scientists
have not agressively sought
support for research,”
Fitzhugh explained “They
recognized the obvious need
and thought the public
would, too But 20 years
without a real increase m
support for animal
agriculture has brought us to
the brink of crisis ”
Today, agricultural
research receives only two
percent of the total USDA
budget, in contrast to the 10
percent allocated in 1955
Moreover, the level of
funding for agricultural
research is strikingly low
when compared to other
federal R&D appropriations
In fiscal 1980, federal
research appropriations for
defense totalled $l5 billion;
for space, $4 6 billion; for
energy, $3 7 billion; for
human helath, $3 6 billion In
sharp contrast, total federal
spending for all agricultural
R&D reached only $6OO
million, the Task Force
pointed out, of which about
half went to animal
agriculture research
This low level is ironic
when compared with the
results that could be ob
tained, they said
“Agricultural research has
been a consistently good
investment, with average
annual returns of 50 percent
on each dollar spent on
research And the principal
benefits go to consumers in
the form of more, better, and
less expensive food
“Because it pays off year
after year in terms of more
defense research 25 times as bu
some $l2 billion in 1980
the research investment
would double ”
The Task Force pointed
out some examples of past
advances in animal
productivity which stemmed
directly from research:
One Holstein cow
produced a record 55,000
pounds of milk in one lac
tation enough to supply
100 average Americans with
milk for one year And, since
1945, the average milk yield
per cow has more than
doubled, from 4500 pounds to
11,700 pounds.
This has resulted in
greater efficiency in feed
and energy use
Pigs now reach the market
younger and leaner The
tune required to reach
market weight has been
reduced by 20 percent, from
280 to 160 days, with 14
percent less carcass fat
These improvements
alone save more than four
million tons of feed gram per
year
A vaccine developed to
prevent Marek’s Disease in
poultry has practically
eliminated death loss from
MD in broilers and was a
major factor increasing
average eggs laid per hen,
from 219 in 1970 to 232 in 1974
The value of these im
provements is estimated to
be $l6B million in 1974 alone,
most of which was passed on
to consumers in lower prices
for poultry and eggs
In addition, these studies
of MD produced a side
benefit, according to F L
Raucher, former head of the
National Cancer Institute.
He said they “will con
tribute substantially, not
only to the control of this
cancer in chickens, but
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also to the prevention and
control of cancers m man ”
The Task Force noted that
such advances resulted from
research completed years
earlier, and that productive
research requires both time
and concentration of effort to
implement. To meet the
challenges of the near term
and the coming century,
they said more research is
needed now in such areas as
Resource conservation
to better utilize low quality
ligno-cellulosic materials for
animal feed, and animal
wastes for fuel and fer
tilizer, to reduce loss of food
value due to animal disease,
product contamination or
inadequate packaging; to
protect environmental
resources by using animals
to produce human food from
fragile ecosystems which
would be damaged by crop
agriculture
Human health to
establish requirements for
et
animal product-supplied and health; to evaluate
nutrients; to determine transfer of resistance fac
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