Plant & Animal Genome VI Conference

W58

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS OF SWINE GENOME KNOWLEDGE

122 Animal Sciences, Ohio State University, 2029 Fyffe Rd, Columbus, OH 43210

Producer attitudes about biotechnological developments are often very different from the attitudes of researchers. They want to know how things can make money rather than how things work. They want to see quick returns and practical uses from research investment. Implementation of new technologies is necessary to reduce the cost of production, increase quality of products, and improve the environmental sustainability of production systems. Knowledge of the pig genome can help the industry improve meat quality, disease resistance, growth rate, muscle deposition, reproduction, semen quality, and litter size. Decisions by producers on implementing biotechnology applications will be made by balancing the benefits with the costs, including possibilities of lost customers because of resistance to biotechnology. The pork industry has become very consumer oriented while competition intensifies among meats and the size of the global market increases. Consumers may oppose biotechnological developments because of fear, lack of knowledge, and misunderstanding. Scientists must do more to demonstrate safety and acceptability of biotechnology to the public so pork producers can use new developments without worry of losing market share. Producers sometimes have the perception that academic arrogance, discipline myopia, uncoordinated research, slow technology transfer, increasing research costs, and counter-productive tenure systems prevent scientists from being as relevant and responsive as they could be. Support from producers is essential as scientists seek funding. This support can be attained by integrating basic research into systems, improving communication skills, achieving more efficient research budgets, rapidly publishing results, and developing flexible research agendas.