The fifth annual Canadian Beef Industry Conference was supposed to take place in Penticton, BC in 2020 and again in 2021 but both years, organizers decided to take the event online. The theme for the 2022 conference was Reconnect Today, Invest in Tomorrow, and by all accounts, the program delivered.

Reconnection was evident before the conference began as people spotted each other in airports across Canada. There were handshakes, hugs, slaps on the back, and lots of groups gathered for drinks before boarding. The conference buzz definitely began in airports. As delegates arrived in Penticton, they continued to reconnect with colleagues, friends, and acquaintances from across the country whom they had not seen in years.

The first keynote speaker, Dr. Jody Carrington, hit attendees right in the gut with the reconnection theme. She’s a psychologist so some were skeptical about her ability to relate to a room full of cattlemen, but even the gruffest of cowboys admitted that her key messages resonated—and may have even moved them. The first of those messages is that we are wired to do hard things, but we were never meant to do them alone. Second, if you are not okay, the people you love and lead will not be okay. And third, when people are acknowledged, they rise. It was a very powerful moment when she asked everyone to take out their phone and text someone close to them the words “I don’t know if I tell you this often enough, but you matter to me.”

Thursday morning at CBIC always focuses on economic updates for the Canadian and North American cattle markets and the global economic outlook. This year, a new session on grain markets was added. The second keynote speaker, agri-food consultant and Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute distinguished fellowTed Bilyea brought all the economic updates together, and gave attendees much to think about on the future of Canada’s agrifood industry. He spoke about the impact of the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia, and about the role that food insecurity and China’s food needs and desires will have on agrifood policy. Key takeaways from Ted’s presentation are that power cannot be achieved without food security; reliance on food imports leads to food insecurity; diversifying trade to sub-optimal locations can create environmental damage as well as social unrest; and that China is facing some strategic choices. Success will entail geopolitical/geoeconomic collective action to encourage China trade along a more sustainable path.

CBIC also featured panel discussions and presentations about the Canadian Beef Advisors’ 2030 goals; diversification of cattle operations including retail, wine, cannabis and biogas investments; economic and environmental impacts of implantation; carbon credit programs; rangeland recovery; consumer attitudes towards beef and nutrition; and building a farm/ranch team.

After success offering courses as part of last year’s virtual conference, short afternoon courses were added to the program for the first time this year, including a hugely popular offering of Ranching for Profit; developing a direct-to-market business plan; range management; and farm financing options.

CBIC has been proud to have a strong youth component, with the Cattlemen’s Young Leaders program and Young Cattlemen’s Council holding their meetings and activities in parallel with the conference. There was a very strong and visible youth presence, but more impressive was the engagement and connections made between future leaders and leaders who have made a profound impact in long and illustrious careers.

The themes of reconnection and investing in tomorrow were evident in the programming, in the networking, and in the attendees who went home reinvigorated. For those who missed out, visit the CBIC social media platforms for updates. The volunteer social media team created a Twitter thread for every session that summarizes the highlights and key takeaways. Shorter highlights can be found on Instagram andFacebook.

Tina Zakowsky

Canadian Angus Association

This month’s At The Grill feature by William Torres (former Research Manager at Cattleland Feedyards and popular presenter at Gentec conferences) tells us why the Arm-Chair Rancher app will help producers make better decisions, and how they can contribute to the apps development

Ever wonder what else you can do to be a smarter producer? How can you make easier decisions from the comfort of your couch?

Well, that’s what the scientists at UAlberta are working on. Drum roll, please……Welcome to the “Arm-Chair Rancher” app: an analytic mobile app that helps beef producers better manage various aspects of their herds. The smart device app will help you make the most informed business decisions you can by leveraging the masses of data you already collect daily on features like herd genetics, feedlots and economics.

In my humble opinion, this is about to be an app that brings together all of the data we collect and don’t know what to do with. Think about it like an ancestry test–but for your cattle. Say you buy a black heifer and didn’t have all the information you would like to have but, even if you did, you wouldn’t know what to do with it. Now with a simple DNA sample, you can unlock the genetic makeup of your heifer, and obtain information that’s relevant like:

Actual breed composition

Profit index

Residual Feed Intake

Birth Weight

Body fat/intramuscular fat

The app is really being designed to assist ranchers. And it makes sense that Alberta’s data-rich cattle industry lends itself naturally to the development of an app. Part of the development is to build one that can use and identify live trends in everything from the weather, commodities, and beef prices. Taking the guesswork out of your equation can really save you some serious dollars.

“For artificial intelligence to work, a lot of data is needed, and while many areas in agriculture are not very digitized, there’s an enormous number and types of measurements for cattle, so there’s this huge potential for getting the data needed to make machine learning work.” Dr. Wishart (one of the developers) noted.

The app will help ranchers create scenarios to predict risk and potentially cut losses in their operations. It’s a function that would have been useful for the drought they experienced this summer, Wishart suggested.

So where can you get it? Well, the app is still being developed but you can definitely contribute to the data portion in the meantime. As everyone contributes their information, the data deepens. The more data contributed, the more valuable the overall app becomes. You’ll have the benefit of both visualizing your information and melding it with general information to come up with a solution that works for your scenario. The prototype app should launch in Fall 2022, and you could be part of it. All you have to do is contact Gentec.

The future is here. Imagine typing in your postal code, and based on historical weather data, the app can help predict future weather trends. For example, weather patterns from the past 40 years are accessible, which makes it possible to estimate what the weather could be like in your region, one month to several years from now. Take that, Star Trek!

The research is supported through Alberta Innovates under the agency’s Smart Agriculture and Food Digitization and Automation Challenge Program, and by Beefbooster.

For more information, contact Jennifer Stewart-Smith at Beefbooster.

The scientific sessions at the 2022 World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production  (WCGALP ) in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, covered many aspects of livestock genetics including genomic predictions (with subtopics of methodologies and tools, challenges, use of complete DNA sequence for genomic predictions), statistical genetics, animal health and welfare, animal breeding in developing countries, novel phenotyping tools, and utilizing genetic diversity. Gentec Research Associates Marzieh Heidaritabar, Liuhong Chen and Dan Hailemariam provide some insights here.

A topic Marzieh is interested in is how to improve the accuracy of predicting genomic breeding values to improve animal selection to enhance genetic progress in commercial livestock breeding programs. She notes that University of California Davis scientists have developed a novel method called “NN-LMM”, which incorporates intermediate omics features (such as gene expression, metabolomics and DNA methylation) by adding middle layers between genotypes and phenotypes. NN-LMM has significantly better prediction accuracy than the commonly-used (standard) single-step genomic prediction approach. This shows the added value of omics data in genetic evaluations and, in Marzieh’s view, this novel approach could be a more useful way than the conventional method of estimating the genomic breeding values in companies’ routine genetic evaluations . Gentec is investigating these areas as part of the international BovReg project.

Liuhong is particularly interested in new methods for genomic selection since it has revolutionized livestock breeding. The methods have evolved from classic approaches to two-step approaches and to single-step approaches which have become the standard. As a result, single-step genomic selection was one of the hot topics at the conference. What will next-generation genomic selection look like? Listening to the talks from top researchers around the world, one could imagine next-gen genomic selection would integrate multiple innovative technologies, such as precision phenotyping, alternative genotyping, machine learning, functional genomics, and multi-omics approaches (as above) as well as gene editing. Gentec researchers have been working on many of these fascinating areas. See some of our 2022 articles on gene editing here and here.

Liuhong presented a new approach that enables the parallel implementation of Bayesian methods (a statistical workhorse for large datasets) for genomic prediction. He is continuing to improve the approach so that it can run efficiently with whole-genome sequence data. He is also working with Gentec CEO Graham Plastow, Gentec Director of Beef Operations John Basarab, and AAFC/Gentec researcher ChangXi Li to develop approaches that use breed-specific haplotypes to improve the estimation of genomic breed composition, retained heterosis and multi-breed genomic predictions in beef cattle. He comments “Attending conferences like this provided opportunities to learn from others and stay at the forefront of genetics and genomics research in livestock.”

Marzieh also attended presentations related to animal health and well-being. Novel welfare-related traits are increasingly receiving more attention in breeding programs in relation to maintaining social license and being included in breeding objectives (using multi-trait selection indices), particularly for group-housed species like chickens and pigs. These animals interact socially and can affect each other’s phenotype, meaning that, besides the direct genetic effects of the animal itself, the indirect genetic effects of its housemates can impact the phenotype of the animal. This seems to be particularly important for aggressive interactions/behaviours. For instance, in pigs, social interaction traits related to aggression were moderately heritable, and there were positive genetic correlations between the aggression traits and pig skin lesions. New findings showed that social interactions are also relevant for beef and dairy cattle for welfare and disease transmission. Researchers at Wageningen University developed a novel method, an extension of the classic social genetic model, for the breeding value estimation for social traits in large groups. This method, along with proper recordings of social interactions, could be very applicable in animal breeding  (see here).

Another interesting presentation from Wageningen was on the development and validation of an approach for pig breeders to better predict the purebred-crossbred genetic correlation from phenotype and genotype data of parental lines (based on approximated genetic variance components of parental lines). This approach could also be applied for other livestock animals in which crossbreeding is the main breeding scheme. (This is another area where Gentec and partners are active in pigs and beef cattle, where the majority of the commercial herd is crossbred. A recent publication on our pig work is here. ) On the cattle side, Ben Hayes (University of Queensland), leader of the 1000 Bull Genomes  project and an adjunct professor at UAlberta presented new work on improving genomic prediction in crossbred cattle in Northern Australia. He acknowledged some older Gentec work as one of two approaches that enabled their innovation (see here ).

The phrase “in the age of genomics, phenotype is king” is one Mike Coffey (SRUC) introduced to us at different Gentec events. Not surprisingly the use of novel phenotyping tools received a lot of attention at WCGALP. The tools include video, GPS, sensors and milk spectra. Recording or tracking behavioural traits and dry matter intake with camera systems and using machine learning to analyze the mass of data generated shows great promise for hard-to-measure traits. Among the different machine learning algorithms, the use of artificial neural networks was emphasized, as it takes into account the non-linear relationships between variables. It is possible to automate computer vision for monitoring important behaviors (tail biting and lameness) in the pig industry (see here).  One example is the Virtual Tag (VTag) software that substitutes hand-annotated data to accelerate pig behavioural studies. A 3D camera technology has been developed by Danish researchers to measure feed intake and body weight on individual cows in commercial farms. A high squared correlation (R2 = 0.9) between feed intake measured with scales and cameras was reported.

Under the theme of Functional Annotation of Genomes, papers related to the discovery of causal genetic variants and recessive defects for different traits in different species were presented. One example was detecting recessive loci responsible for increased mortality in cattle. The researchers screened for homozygous haplotype enrichment/depletion in groups of females in different life trajectories and identified 34 deleterious haplotypes with frequencies ranging from 1.5 to 7.6%. A Gentec collaboration with this group identified a missense variant within the host Synaptogryin-2 gene significantly associated with PCV2b viral load. In this follow-on study, the Nebraska team generated a porcine kidney 15 (PK15) clone homozygous for the “favourable” SYNGR2 p.63Cys allele using in vitro CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing. Infection of this edited PK15 clone demonstrated a significant reduction in total PCV2b replication starting 48 hours after infection compared to wild-type PK15 cells.  A nice example of using gene editing to confirm the effect of causative mutations to help increase our knowledge of the underlying biology of complex traits such as disease resilience.

In summary, WCGALP 2022 was a successful event that brought together livestock genetics and breeding researchers around the globe to share their ideas and results on the challenges facing the sector. Improving resilience of livestock species to the changing environment including disease is another area where Gentec is very active and that was identified as an important approach for the future.

This month’s At The Grill feature by William Torres (former Research Manager at Cattleland Feedyards and popular presenter at Gentec conferences) tells us why cattle are NOT the villains of climate change, and how to argue that case.

Beef producers are under increasing attack by climate activists on the contribution to climate change cause by methane exhaled by cattle. Yet the world continues to lose common sense and deny the political weight this topic carries. Why is the obvious not so clear any more? If these politicians really cared about the environment like they say, they wouldn’t fly across the country for an impromptu photo op at the Calgary Stampede!

I’m not going to go into detail about how “bad” cattle are for the environment, instead let’s focus on the benefits of these ruminants.

First off, if ever you are defending the industry and/or are in an argument with an activist, NEVER—and I mean NEVER—just direct anyone to a scientific paper for proof of empirical evidence. When someone is arguing with emotion, they will never read a paper just for fun (Who does that, anyway?). Remember, this is like trying to convert someone to your religion, and telling them theirs is bad. If they’re not drinkers, why would you tell them to read John 2:1-11? That’s when Jesus converts water into wine. Just saying.

If you really want to present evidence, ask if they would watch a video? Let’s face it, most of us would rather watch something on YouTube than read a scientific paper. Here are some suggestions in my order of aggressiveness, lol

• Cows and climate. Cows and climate by Frank Mithloehner. Yes, I know he’s a doctor but if you push the science you’ll lose the emotional battle. Mention that he’s European and doing work in California, one of the most active states fighting environmental changes.
• How cattle impact climate change. How cattle impact climate change; a CBC report that summarizes all the great things Canadians are doing in under 3 minutes.
• Protestor Diets by Quick Dick McDick. As much as it may seem that this video attacks a vegan diet, it puts a visual demonstration of all the equipment and resources needed to provide such diet. We can all use that reminder!

From an environmental standpoint, cattle play a unique role in maintaining topsoil; they till and fertilize the land naturally. They promote biodiversity and protect wildlife habitat by grazing on land that would otherwise remain unproductive for humans. They reduce the spread of wildfires, providing natural fertilizer… and so much more. Additionally, we don’t just do this improperly, we actually take into account head numbers to land-water ratio. We CARE about what we do—and that is our emotional defence.  We are stewards of the land!

Beef is actually healthier and more sustainable than ever before. Thanks to innovation, education and improved efficiencies, we can produce the same amount of beef with one-third less cattle than in the mid-1970s. Industry initiatives have created policing guidelines and global organizations, such as round tables of sustainability, so that we don’t just say we’re going to do things better, we can prove that we are doing it. Such improvements are responsible for making sure that beef cattle production in North America is only responsible for ~3.3% of greenhouse gas emissions. Compare that to Canada’s road transportation sector (18% in 2018) and the oil and gas sector (20% in 2019)!

transportation and electricity, which made up ~56% of totals in 2016.

My final advice is to not argue but understand where someone is coming from. There’s a good chance that they might not understand what we do. After all, it’s not just a job, it’s a way of life.

The Rangeland Research Institute  and Gentec partnered up on July 20, 2022 to host a field day at the UAlberta’s Roy Berg Research Ranch  in Kinsella, Alberta. The event focused on innovations in land and animal technologies to build climate resilience and showcasing pioneering tools and approaches, such as precision ranching, virtual fencing, drone use, GrowSafe feed bunks and genomics tools.

“You can tell this is very valuable to producers as they are engaged and asking questions,” said Mark Redmond, CEO of Results Driven Agriculture Research (RDAR). This is the first time researchers and producers have been face-to-face since COVID-19 began.

One of the Field Day’s main goals was to demonstrate to producers the work being done by UAlberta, researching precision ranching technologies, their benefits, drawbacks, and development, all for the benefit of the beef industry.

With access to the ranch, Gentec can take advantage of the massive cattle resources and trait-measuring technologies like an integrated scale in squeeze chutes and GrowSafe Bunks that allow for measuring feed intake. The cattle at Kinsella (Angus, Charolais, Hays Converters and the Kinsella Composite herds), their DNA along with measuring technologies allow Gentec to produce genomics tools to improve sustainability and productivity.

The Field Day had an unofficial goal as well: to demonstrate the collaboration of institutions that share the commitment to improve the productivity of the beef industry. Although the event was hosted by the Rangeland Research Institute and Gentec, people from different organizations had the opportunity to talk and present. Carolyn Fitzsimmons from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and Research Lead at the ranch welcomed attendees and talked about GrowSafe. Susan Markus from Lakeland College spoke about replacement heifer selection, and John Church from Thompson Rivers University spoke about using drones to manage rangeland. Master’s students from UAlberta also spoke about their projects at the ranch, along with Diego Martinez Mayorga, a student working at Gentec this summer, who spoke on genomics tools for terminal sire selection.

The event’s overarching theme was precision ranching, which is all about “putting the right animal in the right place at the right time,” says Edward Bork, professor at UAlberta and Director and Mattheis Chair in Rangeland Ecology and Management.

Attendees were taken on pasture walks where presenters from UAlberta spoke about their research projects and the benefits to the Alberta cattle industry. Visitors were treated to demonstrations of John Church’s “flying border collie”, AKA drones, and saw a grazing line in the middle of a pasture where a virtual fence stood, investigated the GrowSafe feed bunk system, and heard from experts in precision ranching tools. Ed Bork stated that “[UAlberta] is the industry test run, globally”, referring to its status as a global leader for rangeland ecology and rangeland management research.

The day concluded with thanks from UAlberta to producers for coming out and learning about the work being done.

“I’ve been coming for a long time” says David Andrews, Gentec’s Board Chair. “There’s always lots to learn every time, always something new. You get to actually interact with researchers, and this is a spectacular facility for research”.

One cow/calf and backgrounding producer expressed his appreciation, declaring that this was a “very useful day”. He was excited about the new technologies in development, and saw the applications for his own operations today. As a multi-generational farmer, he expressed his eagerness for his children and grandchildren to put to use the tools seen at this Field Day to real life:

“I wish I had 20 more years to see it all happen,” he said.

Jacqui Gironella and Diego Martinez Mayorga

Livestock Gentec

Farm animals who interact socially can affect each other’s phenotype, meaning that the indirect genetic effects of their pen-mates can impact the phenotype of the individual animal. This seems to be particularly important for aggressive interactions/behaviours. For instance, in pigs, social interaction traits related to aggression were moderately heritable, and there was positive genetic correlation between the aggression traits and pigs’ skin lesions. Tail- and ear-biting are the most common behavioural vices in growing-finishing pigs. Besides being an important welfare problem, they also have economic repercussions due to reduced weight gain, on-farm veterinary treatment, reduced carcass weights and condemnations.

Social interactions are also relevant for beef and dairy cattle for welfare and disease transmission. For example, if welfare-related traits like the foot structure of Angus cattle are added to profit-driven selection indexes, recording levels increased and the accuracy of the evaluation for these traits improved. Researchers at Wageningen University developed a novel method, an extension of the classic social genetic model, for breeding value estimation for social traits in large groups. This method, along with proper recordings of social interactions, could be very applicable in animal breeding.

Using genetic selection by including indirect genetic effects greatly improves the interaction among pigs by reducing damaging behaviour. However, environmental factors, such as the number of pigs/pen and diet, are crucial in achieving the desired goal. Building on work done in collaboration with researchers at Wageningen and Topigs Norsvin, Gentec (Graham Plastow, Clover Bench and Elda Dervishi) and the Swine Research and Technology Center are leading a project to develop management strategies to monitor and manage tail- and ear-biting in pigs. Live observations focus on counting skin lesions and determining the severity of biting. However, live observation can miss behaviours of interest because it only takes place for a short time during the day. Video recordings are monitoring feeding, drinking, and tail-biting behavior every Monday for 8 hours. In combination with saliva and blood analysis collection, we hope to provide a more complete picture of these behaviours. Welfare-related traits, like the number of skin lesions, can be added to selection indexes to improve the accuracy of the evaluation for these traits. We can also monitor the frequency and time the pigs spend interacting with the enrichment objects (for example a KONG).

Overall the results may lead to new recommendations for the swine industry on how to avoid and manage tail- and ear-biting. In addition, it might inform welfare-related codes of practices in Canada.

BEEF

A machine learning approach for predicting the most and the least feed-effficient groups in beef cattle Shirzadifar, A.; Plastow, G.; Basarab, J.; Miar, Y.; Li, C.; Fitzsimmons, C.; Riazi, M.; Manafiazar, G.

From BovReg (and other projects eg GC Resilient Dairy etc)

Accuracy of genomic prediction of dry matter intake in Dutch Holsteins using sequence variants from meta-analyses Gredler-Grandl, B.; Raymond, B.; Chitneedi, P.K.; Cai, Z.; Panzanilla-Pech, C.I.V.; Fischer, D.; Bolormaa, S.; Chud, T.S.; Wang, Y.; Li, C.; Villanueva, B.; Fernandez, A.; Kuehn, C.; Lidauer, M.H.; Pryce, J.E.; Plastow, G.; Baes, C.F.; Charfeddine, N.; Veerkamp, R.F.; Bouwman, A.C.

Multi-dimensional functional annotation of bovine genome for the BovReg project Moreira, G.C.M.; Dupont, S.; Becker, D.; Salavati, M.; Clark, R.; Clark, E.L.; Plastow, G.; Kühn, C.; Charlier, C.

Comparative analysis of CAGE-Seq across tissues reveals transcription start sites unique to cattle Salavati, M.; Clark, R.; Becker, D.; Kühn, C.; Plastow, G.; Moreira, G.C.M.; Charlier, C.; Clark, E.L.

OTHER BOVINE

Functional SNPs and INDELs within regulatory elements associated with mastitis in Holstein cow using -OMICs technologies Asselstine, V.; Medrano, J.F.; Stothard, P.; Miglior, F.; Karrow, N.A.; Baes, C.F.; Schenkel, F.S.; Cánovas, A.

PIGS

Genome-wide association analyses and genomic prediction for pork meat quality traits using whole-genome sequence Heidaritabar, M.; Huisman, A.; Bink, M.C.A.M.; Charagu, P.; Plastow, G.

Prediction of breeding values for feed intake in pigs using individual versus group records along with correlated traits Zhang, C.; Kemp, R.A.; Dekkers, J.C.M.; Plastow, G.S.; Gao, H.

Multi-trait genomic estimation of genetic parameters for growth and carcass traits of Duroc pigs Akanno, E.C.; Thekkoot, D.M.; Zhang, C.; Bierman, C.; Plastow, G.; Kemp, R.A.

Large-scale cis-eQTL analysis of gene expression in blood of young healthy pigs using PigGTEx Kramer, L.M.; Teng, J.; Lim, K.S.; Gao, Y.; Yin, H.; Bai, L.; Liu, G.E.; Zhang, Z.; Fang, L.; Plastow, G.S.; Tuggle, C.K.; Dekkers, J.C.M.

Indicators of disease resilience from complete blood count and in vitro immunoassays data from young-healthy pigs Bai, X.; Cheng, J.; Fortin, F.; Harding, J.C.S.; Dyck, M.K.; Dekkers, J.C.M.; Field, C.J.; Rogel-Gailard, C.; Blanc, F.; Plastow, G.S.

GBP5 PRRSV resistance gene had no effect on pigs’ infectivity or susceptibility in a trial simulating natural infections Chase-Topping, M.E.; Plastow, G.; Dekkers, J.; Fang, Y.; Gerdts, V.; Van Kessel, J.; Harding, J.; Opriessnig, T.; Doeschl-Wilson, A.

Genetic relationships among immune response traits of young healthy pigs evaluated by immunoassays Bhatia, V.; Schmied, J.; Cheng, J.; Bai, X.; Mallard, B.; Fortin, F.; Harding, J.C.S.; Dyck, M.K.; Plastow, G.S.; Field, C.J.; Rogel-Gaillard, C.; Blanc, F.; Piggen Canada; Dekkers, J.C.M.

Methods and Tools: Software and Computing Strategies

Subsetted orthogonal data augmentation for fast parallel implementation of Bayesian models for whole-genome analyses Chen, L.; Plastow, G.

The stage was set on July 22, 2022, for over 100 kids from central Alberta to find out what their 6-month effort yielded. Members of 4H clubs had been feeding a steer through the winter, and were all keen to learn how their steer carcass placed in a regional and provincial competition. Oscar Lopez Campos from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada graded the carcasses for both competitions. But before getting those all-exciting results, the 4Hers toured Olds College and attended a presentation on the beef market.

With this backdrop, enter Livestock Gentec. In the corner of the auditorium, on a foldable table sat reports with the name of each 4Her and the CCIA number of the steer they raised. Inside each report was an introduction to genomics, several individualized genomic values (genomically-enhanced gEPDs, a Feeder Profit Index value, genomic breed composition and genomic retained heterozygosity) and a description of each tool. This way, each 4Her could get a report on the expected performance of their steer/steer’s progeny, the steer’s breed makeup and the amount of hybrid vigour present in that animal—all from a small hair (DNA) sample. That might not seem significant to a 10-year-old 4Her but, in commercial operations, these data could be a deciding factor between a profit or loss when selling a given animal.

For Gentec, the benefits of attending 4H events and being involved with this organization are clear. We are reaching out to the future ranchers of Alberta and introducing them to a novel, easy and a relatively inexpensive way of gaining a large amount of information on their animals. Instead of having to backtrack through hundreds of records and pedigrees of sires and dams, they can get accurate gEPDs from a single hair strand.

While some of the 4Hers “get it”, plenty of them had no idea what we were here for. Parents, too. As one put it, “We thought you guys were here to make sure the carcasses weren’t swapped for the competition. We had no idea you could predict performance from DNA.”

Beef Industry Liaison Clinton Brons quickly changed that lack of knowledge with an introduction and appreciation for Gentec’s funders, as did Knowledge Translator Diego Martinez with a short presentation on the genomic reports. Soon after, parents and kids collected their reports and the Gentec’s team answered questions.

Questions ranged from what the Feeder Profit Index is, what the genomic breed composition of an animal tells them and how hybrid vigour impacts replacement heifers and cows.

Over 130 4Hers have been exposed to genomics through these reports since April 2022 so… does that mean that Gentec has 130 new producers willing to test their herds genomically? Not quite. Over the past few 4H events, we’ve seen that some parents are keener than others, ask for more information and even provide their contact for follow up. And some 4H leaders/executives have already introduced this tech to their farms, like Paul Franz who spoke to Gentec earlier this year. This showcases the importance for research organizations like Gentec to reach out to grassroots organizations like 4H to communicate and demonstrate the validity and importance of tools and resources that research yields for the industry.

The 4H experience in 2022 has been fantastic for Gentec as it has shown a new approach to share information. The approach is two-fold: 1. Educate young farmers about genomics so they might be willing to use these tools when they take the reins of an operation, and 2. Give young kids the information with the hope that Dad/Mom or Grandpa/Grandma read it, like it and use it on their farm (or at least reach out for more information).

It is Gentec’s mission to develop validated genomic solutions to improve the competitiveness of the beef industry. Collaborating with 4H has given us the opportunity to increase trust in our validated tools, which will overall increase the productivity and sustainability of the Canadian beef industry.

If you are a 4H member/parent/leader interested in collaborating with Gentec—or if you are a producer interested in talking to a Gentec representative about genomics or possible research projects you could be involved in, reach out to us at lsgentec@ualberta.ca.

By Diego Martinez Mayorga

During my PhD defence, my external examiner Dr. Alison Van Eenennaam  an expert in Animal Biotechnology and Genetics from the University of California, Davis asked me, “If you could gene edit anything in cattle, what would it be?” Under pressure to respond quickly and concisely, I fumbled something unsatisfying but—just like those clever retorts you come up with after an argument is over and done with—I go back and redraft what I should have said every day.

Here’s the thing about gene editing: it’s excellent technology, used by bacteria to shred invading viral DNA as a defence mechanism. And it’s opening the door for medicine and agriculture to make precise, targeted edits in the genome for genetic solutions to serious challenges. But it’s expensive, highly regulated, and currently limited to traits that are impacted primarily by one (or few) genes. Most economically-relevant traits in agriculture, particularly livestock, are polygenic (many genes contribute a small proportion of variation observed).

So given the opportunity to rehash my response to Dr. Van Eenennaam’s question, I’d say, “Nothing, yet.” This is partially because the obvious (single) gene traits have already been edited. New, gene-edited variants for livestock, include:

Holstein cattle, genetically selected to produce high volumes of milk, are naturally horned. Horns pose a safety and welfare challenge to humans and animals in their proximity. Dehorning animals is labour-intensive, stressful and painful. The polled (hornless) genetic variant occurs naturally in other bovine populations: Angus, for example. Holstein bulls genetically edited to be polled by Acceligen and their progeny were tested extensively at the University of California, Davis. They offered dairy industries globally a way to improve animal health and welfare without having to crossbreed with a naturally-polled animal. Crossbreeding may offer significant advantages for horns and other traits such as fertility, body condition, foot structure and carcass quality but it would also reduce milk production. This particular gene editing endeavour also provided a lot of learning lessons, both in terms of quality control and in navigating regulations. In the process of seeking FDA approval for commercial use of the bull, a bacterial antibiotic resistance gene was found in the genome sequence due to the specific editing technology used.

Other gene edited variants include change of sex to male. Male offspring in beef production grow faster. This results in shorter time to market, less resource requirements and less environmental impact. Addressing animal health, two disease-resistant variants, one in pigs that targets susceptibility to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) virus and one in cattle that targets susceptibility to bovine tuberculosis have been developed. Both diseases have significant financial and welfare impacts. Also impacting animal welfare, several variants addressing heat stress and heat tolerance in cattle have been developed. One approach has been to change coat colour, moving from black to red or tan. Another approach has been to genetically engineer the slick coat gene in animals. Both variants for coat colour and slick coat are naturally occurring, and could be introduced to the population through crossbreeding. Gene editing eliminates having to manage other factors (advantages in some traits such as increased fertility are often realized by crossbreeding, and moderation to some production traits such as milk production might also be an outcome).

Growing global populations, shrinking resources such as land and water, and heightened social licence to operate have put significant pressure on agriculture to deliver consistent quality food at low prices. Science and technology can and do help deliver on both fronts. So as an advocate and proponent of science and technology, why wouldn’t I jump at the chance to genetically edit any trait?

The second half of my answer is in deference to my heritage and my parents. They want science and technology in their medicine, their cars, their computers, their smart phones that they use to communicate. They are not sure they want science and technology in their food. Now, I’m going to convince them of the benefits of genetic engineering. And, I’m going to convince them that we’ve learnt to look for the ‘unknowns and the unintended consequences’, to do the quality controls. But, this will take time. I don’t believe we should put food options on the market before we’ve had the opportunity to have this conversation with my parents, my community, your community—and all consumers.

We’d like to know: what traits would you genetically engineer into your livestock if you could?  And as a consumer, are you comfortable consuming food produced using gene edited livestock?

Kajal Devani

Director of Science and Technology, Canadian Angus Association

“Sustainability: Rhetoric vs. Reality”

How do we address rhetoric like ‘meat is murder’, ‘we need to rewild cattle’, ‘the beef industry is causing climate change’? These were the thorny questions raised and addressed at the BIF Symposium 2022 ’s opening discussion on “Sustainability: Rhetoric vs. Reality”  with presentations by Ruaraidh Petre, of the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef; John Crowley, AbacusBio in Canada ; and Jason Sawyer, of the King Ranch Institute for Ranch Management at Texas A&M University–Kingsville.

Beef industries globally are being used as a scapegoat by people like Richard Branson, Oprah and David  Suzuki. The reality is that beef demand remains strong, globally. However, inflation and global volatility is impacting production costs significantly. Reality is that consumers want to eat beef. They just want the assurance that it’s ok to do so.

Because it is not in our nature to communicate well about the great things that we do in raising beef and protecting the environment, we need to support agencies like the Global Round Table for Sustainable Beef and the Canadian Round Table for Sustainable Beef to help us. The communication needs to include GHG emissions from inefficient systems, such as long periods under poor nutrition and management, and poor land conversion practices (e.g., deforestation to grow soybean and then graze cattle).  In reality, our emission intensity in North America is low (relative to what?; milk, plant-based protein?; certainly lower relative to young cattle in South America that are kept on pastures for long periods of time and then slaughtered at 36-38 months of age)—but we should still be part of the solution. Solutions discussed ranged from fitting environmental impacts into economic selection indexes, through improving production efficiencies through selection for traits such as weight at days-to-finish, feed efficiency, methane emissions , and fertility with the goal being nature-positive beef production / carbon neutrality .

Carbon neutrality can only be a measure and an objective if calculated accurately and objectively. So far, calculations of the global impact from beef production do not consider the tremendous variation between countries, intensity, production systems, gross emissions versus emission intensity (i.e. per amount of product), and warming impacts versus carbon impacts. The measuring stick has to be correct first.

Having said that, improving production efficiencies through management and genetic selection can be a lower-cost way to reduce GHG emissions  and assist producers reduce the resources needed per unit of produce. Gentec researchers have been working on this for many years (feed efficiency, reducing age at slaughter, McDonald’s pilot project, increased herd-level hybrid vigour through genomic indicators of heterosis, more accurate breeding values using genomics, grazing practices to improve carbon sequestration).

Another solution discussed at BIF is fitting the genetics to the environment. If you’ve ever heard the term G by E (GxE) interactions, it refers to differences in genetic expression in different environments. It’s a source of frustration for animal-breeding geneticists as well as producers because it means that one size does NOT fit all. A selection index, for example, developed for use across a country or even a continent isn’t going to work the same way in each environmental pocket. Strong evidence suggests that using a generalized index is still significantly more effective than basing selection decisions only on phenotypic appearance, raw performance information or EPDs for one or a few traits.

Personally, I see GxE interactions as an opportunity. There’s a very good home for different types of cattle and genetics . Notably, Gentec is working on GxE in its BCRC Fertility DMI project (winter grazing vs confined feeding) though the number of animals and environment must be increased dramatically to obtain meaningful results. It’s a start. The key is to pair the right type with your environment (a theme explored in the forthcoming Field Day at the University of Alberta Kinsella ranch). GxE interactions are good to be aware of, and if you’re interested in playing with a customized index based on your specific breeding targets, market drivers and inputs, then Matt Spangler and Bruce Golden have developed an app that will be available through the BIF website (stay tuned for the release of IGENDEC ).

Discussion on ‘one size doesn’t fit all environments’ led into significant discussion about the need for different genetics based increasingly on use  – CED (calving ease) emphasis really should vary based on current dystocia levels and the breeding herd (size, breed, heifers versus cows). Producers are also going to want to vary genetics based on different selling markets (are you selling weaned calves, breeding heifers, breeding bulls, boxed beef?). One market that has grown significantly and has specific genetic requirements is the beef-on-dairy market. This gives dairy producers the opportunity to change profitability from females that might be great milk producers but not the top 30%. Genetics from the beef industry can facilitate improvements in muscling, average daily gain and feed efficiency. The dairy industry is responding to this trend by moving its focus from putting selection pressure on calving ease. Instead, dairy producers are measuring pelvic size and moving females to handle a better-muscled calf. Dairy producers identified an opportunity to increase profitability, and are using genomics technology to help them adapt their herd to maximize this. In collaboration with Semex, Herdtrax by Telus Agriculture and other industry partners, Gentec’s John Basarab and co-researchers have been funded by RDAR and Genome Alberta to conduct a small-scale project on validation and deployment of a feeder profit index for beef-on-dairy feeders. They plan to expand this through proposals to initiatives such as Genome Canada’s recently-announced Climate Action Genomics Initiative.

Advances in genetic evaluations assist producers in addressing some of the requirements for diverse genetics. Heart scores are being collected to develop genetic selection tools for animals that are better equipped to finish at higher altitudes, and to finish in feedlots at low or moderate elevations without incidence of heart disease. Another example discussed is incorporating traits that impact environmental sustainability into genetic selection indexes, and the challenges (but also successes) involved with across-breed and across-country genetic evaluations. These will ultimately provide beef producers globally with robust genetic selection tools with which to address global challenges and opportunities associated with beef production.

“Global Perspectives on Adaptation and Genetic Prediction”

Our second day at BIF 2022 was launched by a general session on “Global Perspectives on Adaptation and Genetic Prediction.” Speakers included Tony Clayton, president of Clayton Agri-Marketing; and Phil George, Miratorg Agribusiness Holding production director, beef & lamb operations, Moscow, Russia.

I strongly recommend that you watch these presentations (links below). I can’t articulate the magnitude of the export projects that these two gentlemen are working on. We’re not talking about exporting a ewe, a goat, and two cows to some remote country. We’re talking about export projects where 300,000 head of cattle get exported to Russia to populate a complete integrated system from propagation of a genetic nucleus, commercial multiplication and management of these genetics to point-of-sale with data collected every step of the way. And those data are being used to validate which of the initial imported US genetics actually worked.

If you’re on the fence about EPDs, know that these people don’t make purchasing or breeding decisions without them. They’ve also learnt, Phil George will attest, that best-quality genetics result in better outcomes all the way down the production chain. I’m still reeling from their use of technology and the amount of data they collect throughout their integrated production.

Both men talked about the huge global market potentials for U.S. beef genetics. If you’re a Canadian beef producer talking to someone who can lobby for Canadian beef exports, we need to be more competitive in the global export market. And we need access. We need to market Canadian beef genetics to places like China. Pakistan and Vietnam were the biggest importers of beef genetics last year. And Canadian beef genetics need to be described by EPDs because that’s what global buyers are considering when making large-scale buying decisions.

This piece gives you a brief flavour of the discussions that happen at the Beef Improvement Federation annual symposium but is by no means inclusive of all the sessions that were offered. All the sessions are recorded and available for viewing. For more information on BIF and the BIF Symposium, visit beefimprovement.org. The BIF 2023 Symposium will be in Calgary, AB on July 3 – 6. Please join us for what is going to be a stellar event.

Kajal Devani

Director of Science and Technology, Canadian Angus Association

NOTE

If these talks sounded interesting to you, you might consider “saving the date” for BIF 2023