The discussion of modern breeding, agriculture and animal welfare is extremely interesting and has multiple aspects. None of these has been given short shrift:

> Since the domestication of livestock some 10,000 or so years ago, man has been selectively breeding animals to align with our human needs for wool, hide, meat, milk and draft. It has only been in the last 60 years or so, that the rate of genetic change in some livestock species has accelerated considerably due to the application of quantitative genetics and selective breeding, taking advantage of evolving computer technology and software developments (e.g. BLUP). 

> The improvements in production performance as a result of implementing such technology is impressive, with broiler chickens reaching target 2 kg slaughter weights in half the time (36 vs 65 d) in 1999 compared to 1976, and the average dairy cow now producing more than 6 times the amount of milk of that needed to rear a calf. With the world’s population predicted to increase by 2-3 billion in the next 40 years and along with it an increase in the consumption of animal products, the use of animal breeding technologies will undoubtedly be required to meet the challenge of feeding the world in the future. 

> Breeding for disease resistance was observed by Morris (2000) to be a relatively new concept, which, before the 1990s, the wisdom of which was seriously questioned. Yet now it is generally accepted as being feasible and there are some useful demonstrations of how it can be implemented in practice. However, there are many more reports of the deleterious effects that animal breeding has had on health and welfare, than there are success stories of the impact that their inclusion into breeding programmes has had on reducing disease prevalence levels.

> The use of broader breeding goals in animal breeding programmes can only be realised if robust phenotypes are available to distinguish variation between animals in their ability to resist disease, ability to express desirable behaviours or better adapt to changing management situations. A willingness to accept a compromise in the rates of genetic gain through the incorporation of such traits, will go some way to halt the decline that (in some circumstances) is predicted in fitness traits due to their largely unfavourable genetic relationships with production.

The Use Of Breeding To Improve Animal Welfare
J. Conington, J. Gibbons, M.J Haskell and L. Bünger

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