Genetic Selection for Disease Resistance: Challenges and Opportunities

Animal health and well being have become increasingly important issues for animal producers and consumers. Animal diseases causing morbidity and mortality significantly decrease profitability of animal production. Antibiotics that were once widely used to prevent or treat animal diseases are now administered more judiciously because of consumer fears of residual drugs in meat products and microbial resistance to commonly used antibiotics. Because no new class of antibiotics has been developed in the past three decades, the continued use of antibiotics may become more limited. Also, there has been an emergence of previously unknown diseases suc