LivestockBiotechnology in Livestock Production and Health Population growth, income growth and urbanization are fuelling a massive increase in demand for food of animal origin in developing countries - the 'livestock revolution'. In the past, developing countries have coped with the increases in demand mainly by expanding livestock populations. However, declining land areas per agricultural population are now forcing developing countries to intensify livestock production and monogastric animals, i.e. pigs and particularly poultry, are the most important sources of livestock sector growth. Over the past centuries, biological, chemical and mechanical innovations have provided the basis for livestock sector development by containing the impact of livestock diseases, increasing yields and reducing labour requirements. Today, agricultural biotechnology is a new source of innovations that can potentially reshape agriculture as profoundly as any of the previous fields of technological innovation. Intensification of livestock production is feared to reduce genetic diversity indirectly by displacing landraces and their inherent diversity as farmers adopt genetically uniform varieties of livestock. Biotechnologies such as cryopreservation of semen and embryos, coupled with artificial insemination and embryo transfer as well as somatic cloning are important actual and potential tools for the preservation of animal biodiversity. Genetically modified livestock are not likely to play a major role in developing countries in the near future. The larger, short term potential for the application of biotechnologies in the livestock sector of developing countries resides in the use of bio-engineered inputs covering the entire food production chain from animal feed to product processing. In the short to medium term (5 to 10 years), the largest impacts of biotechnology on livestock production in developing countries are likely to stem from increasing the quality of livestock feeds through improving nutrient content of forages as well as the digestibility of low quality feeds and through enhanced disease control. The role of animal diseases as a major constraint to enhanced livestock productivity will substantially increase as animal production intensifies and as livestock densities increase in warmer and more humid ecological zones. Use of DNA biotechnology in animal health through more effective, cheap and robust vaccines combined with enhanced diagnostic tools could contribute significantly to improved animal disease control, thereby stimulating both domestic food production and participation in livestock trade. Biotechnology also offers considerable potential for improvements in agro-industrial processing, particularly through more environmentally friendly or energy-efficient processes. While most of these technologies are not likely to be accessible to traditional animal agriculture, they will be accessible to a considerable degree to the emerging commercial and industrial sector in many developing countries. Most of the biotechnology research and development (R&D) activities (>80%) are conducted by large private companies for commercial exploitation and are designed to meet the requirements of developed markets. They are thus unlikely to be very suitable for the conditions of small-scale farmers in tropical regions of the world and this may lead to increasing inequality of income and wealth within countries (large vs. small farmers) and between countries (developed vs. developing). Given that commercial considerations may not necessarily reflect social concerns and needs, there remains a pivotal role for public-sector research and the involvement of international organizations. Relevant Documents:
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Background Document to Conference 3 of the FAO Biotechnology Forum, entitled 
