The support of meat value chains by genetic technologies

Ongoing meat and food industry consolidation has resulted in the creation of larger and more complex, vertically integrated and/or coordinated food production systems. These systems have also been focused on development of differentiated 'Value Chains' as a departure from the traditional commodity oriented 'Supply Chains'. The main goal of value chains is to achieve sustainable competitiveness through focusing resources on efficiently producing goods that offer superior consumer-recognized value. A closely-aligned value chain often contains vertically and horizontally linked players such as genetics and genetic improvement program (s), farmer(s), processor(s), distributor(s), and retailer(s). In this paper we postulate that the underlying foundation of the success of meat value chain accomplishments has been through substantial development of animal genetic technologies enabling sustainable production of animal protein-based consumer products of desirable quantity and quality. It is plausible to assume that further advancement in genomic selection and eventually proteomics will enable implementation of more complex genetic improvement programs leading to further development of differentiated meat value chains focused on ever changing consumer needs. (C) 2010 The American Meat Science Association. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.