Ontario Animal Research and Services Committee (OARSC) Executive Summary 2005

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• Ontario Animal Research and Services Committee(OARSC) Strategic Priorities Report 2005 - printable PDF version
  
  

The Ontario Animal Research Services Committee established the following research priorities in 2004 for the period 2004 to 2008.

The recommendations noted below are listed in order of priority.

• Improving animal health
  Animal Health, its impact on human health and producer profitability, is the highest priority for the animal industry. Research priorities include:
  • Faster, cheaper and easier to use new animal disease diagnostics
  • Infectious disease research, including Aetiology and Pathogenesis with the hope of preventing, curing, controlling and containing animal disease
  • Biosecurity protocols are needed to contain and then eliminate infectious diseases as a defensive strategy against infectious disease outbreaks such as the Avian Influenza outbreak that happened in British Columbia in 2004.
    
    
• Maintaining/improving confidence and satisfaction in animal products
  Food safety / quality research concerns are an effort to maintain consumer confidence by:
  • reducing food borne pathogens and finding acceptable intervention strategies and reduce drug residuesProduct quality priorities include improved processing technologies to increase shelf life and produce new products.
    
    
• Improving production performance or efficiency:
  Industry research interests in increased performance, though a focus on nutrition, breeding and genetics, reproduction, neonatal survival and longevity are an attempt to improve production efficiency, reduce costs and improve profitability for the industry.

• Product innovation
  Product innovation including enriched nutritional foods, foods with health benefits (nutraceuticals), novel food products and innovations that address niche markets (organic, etc.), are all strategies being identified as priorities for research by the animal industry to find new markets for their commodities.

• Reducing/mitigating environmental impact:
  Environmental issues as a societal concern have shown no sign of abatement. Research on nutrient management, protection of water, soil, and air (including odour) and disposal of on-farm mortalities continue to be industry priorities.

• Development of non-food bio-products:
  Recent regulatory changes and disease identification has reduced the value of waste byproducts and in some cases increased the cost of disposal. Research priorities focus around risk materials from slaughterhouses, processing "wastes", ruminant by-products and manure.

• Improving the welfare of farmed animals:
  Development of science-based measures of animal well-being with design of appropriate animal environments are research priorities that help the industry enhance consumer confidence and acceptance of animal products and also potentially increase production productivity.

• Development of business principles/economic assessments:
  Management models for business and industry including benchmarks, business planning for profitability and economic impact are priorities that help the industry evaluate their competitiveness.

For a complete copy of the report go to : http://www.uoguelph.ca/research/omafra/forms/oascc.shtml

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