Beef and Lamb New Zealand wants to combine its genetics investments into one entity so it can use science to help farmers cope with new challenges such as growing productive animals on hill country. Photo by Ruth Grundy.

Industry-good organisation Beef and Lamb New Zealand is holding a series of meetings this month to get levy-payers' support, before a referendum it will hold next month on its proposal to combine its genetic research and development services into one entity.

It wants to combine Sheep Improvement Limited (SIL), its Central Progeny Test (CPT) and Ovita into Beef and Lamb New Zealand Genetics, with support from the Government.

It promises to make an additional investment in beef genetics to support systems used by New Zealand bull breeders.

Beef and Lamb Genetics manager Mark Young said it wanted to set the direction for its breeding industry for the next 20 years. There were several key considerations behind its proposal and the meetings were to ''begin the debate'' of ''where we should be going'', Dr Young said.

One challenge already identified by farmers was that competition for land was pushing sheep and beef finishing into harder country, so there was a need to look at breeding objectives and to determine which genetics suited which environments, he said.

''Some traits which we have been selecting for, for beef and lamb improvement, are near their optimum now - like fatness of meat.''

There were other beneficial traits which could be brought into breeding programmes, such as animal longevity, eating qualities and storage life, which would increase profitability, he said.

And there was potential to exploit the new opportunities the rapidly changing DNA technology offered.

Another outcome sought by Beef and Lamb was to make it easier for farmers to use the genetic information produced.

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Chance for say on genetics

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