The official report from the International Technical Conference on Animal Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, held in Interlaken, Switzerland, on 3-7 September 2007, is available from FAO. This document includes the Interlaken Declaration on Animal Genetic Resources as well as a Global Plan for Animal Genetic Resources, both adopted by the official delegates to the conference.

The conference also adopted a comprehensive summary on livestock breeds. Titled The State of the World’s Animal Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, this report includes inputs from LPP’s Ilse Köhler-Rollefson, Evelyn Mathias and Paul Mundy.

Non-government organizations organized a side event that ran at the same time as the main conference. This side event focused on aspects that the official government delegates to the conference risked neglecting: the important role of livestock keepers in conserving breed diversity, the role played by the livestock industry in eroding diversity, and the need to switch the focus of livestock development away from animal productivity and towards the needs and potential of the livestock keepers.
 

LPP was involved in several of the side event activities:

• Susanne Gura organized a session on the livestock genetics industry and its impact in developing countries
• Ilse Köhler-Rollefson organized a session on conserving genes, creating livelihoods – not without livestock keepers rights
• Evelyn Mathias organized a session on endogenous livestock development – supporting poor livestock keepers
• P. Vivekanandan of the LIFE Network (of which LPP is a member) organized a session community level conservation of indigenous animal breeds in India.

In addition, Ilse Köhler-Rollefson and other LIFE members provided reactions to papers presented during a Scientific Forum that immediately preceded the main conference.

Official conference report

Conference website

Conference report from the International Institute for Sustainable Development

State of the World’s Animal Genetic Resources report

Side event website

Scientific Forum on Animal Genetic Resources

A revised and updated version is now available of Susanne Gura’s groundbreaking study on “Livestock genetics companies: Concentration and proprietary strategies of an emerging power in the global food economy”.

This study describes how a few large multinational companies dominate the breeding of cattle, pigs and poultry, and the effects this has on the economy, ecology and society.

The revised study is available in English, German and (soon) Spanish.

Rolex Awards for Enterprise has again featured the work of LPP founder Dr Ilse Köhler-Rollefson.

The Rolex Awards website describes how Ilse is campaigning to conserve livestock breeds, and the rights of livestock keepers to control their animal genetic resources.

Rolex quotes Ilse as saying that “if companies are allowed to control animal genetics… the result could be just a few varieties of livestock… being raised worldwide, instead of a huge range of varieties adapted to their environments and to the economic needs of those who raise them.”

“The only way to preserve them is to enable livestock-keepers to generate income, so that their way of life continues,” Ilse explains. “For the camels in Rajasthan, we have developed niche products, like camel milk ice cream, which is proving a success. We can thus help the herders and the camels to survive.”

Ilse was named an Associate Laureate by Rolex Awards for Enterprise in 2002.