Animal production industry in the year 2000 A.D.

One can easily envision that, in the very near future, all bulls being progeny tested will be screened for genomic markers linked to economic traits and females may also be screened if enrolled as donors in a nuclear transfer programme. The concept of producing large numbers of genetically identical embryos, frozen, sexed, screened for economic traits and produced inexpensively from slaughterhouse by-products, is within our grasp. While large scale commercialization of these concepts is a function of time, knowledge and cost-effective biotechnologies, all of these concepts have already been demonstrated. The production of transgenic animals and embryos will be accelerated as gene mapping links genes to economic traits. What will happen to protein production when commercial cow herds can be made up of one or more female clone lines mated to bulls of the same clone? The obvious answer is predictability of performance to a magnitude never before achieved in agriculture.