Delegates attending the National Dairy Herd Information Association’s (DHIA) 47th annual meeting March 8 in Fort Worth, Texas, unanimously adopted a resolution to thank dairy industry partners, including DHIA, Purebred Dairy Cattle Association (PDCA), National Association of Animal Breeders (NAAB) and their member organizations. These groups spent countless hours working on behalf of the dairy industry to ensure the availability of high quality genetic evaluations and management tools in the future.

Council on Dairy Cattle Breeding and U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) representatives facilitated discussions and plans through the dairy data working group and business plan working group.

The goals are to cooperatively foster continued research efforts, while ensuring the privacy and quality of data flowing to those research efforts, and enabling those benefitting from past and future applications of said research to help share in the associated costs.

Historically, DHIA, PDCA, NAAB and their member organizations submitted data to USDA-ARS Animal Improvement Programs Laboratory (AIPL) for research. This research has been vital to dairy cattle’s genetic advancement in the U.S. and around the world.

Additionally, AIPL’s research holds the promise of healthier animals and higher quality dairy products to help feed a hungry world with safe, nutrient-dense foods.

At the farm level, this research has enabled producers to put research into practice through genetic improvement and management of dairy cattle for better nutrition and health of the animals. This has resulted in a balanced approach for producing milk and feeding the world.

Still in its infancy, mapping of the bovine genome holds great promise of rapid genetic advancement to benefit cows, producers, the dairy industry and consumers.

Thus, it’s important for all who benefit from AIPL research to share in costs that build and maintain the network necessary to provide high quality data and research.

Furthermore, the National DHIA delegates’ adopted resolution encourages continued cooperative efforts in the future.

This work should be done in a prudent and timely manner and should include implementing a plan that assures the availability of high quality genetic evaluations and management tools for the U.S. dairy industry in the future. PD

—From National Dairy Herd Information Association news release