Sustainability

Pioneering animal genetic improvement

Our purpose at Genus is to pioneer animal genetic improvement to help nourish the world sustainably¹. Our role is to help farmers remove the guesswork when breeding animals. We identify and select animal ‘traits’ linked to how efficiently animal feeds can be turned into meat or milk, how the quality of the meat and milk can be maximised, and how animals’ susceptibility to disease can be reduced. We then use genomic selection to improve these traits with every new generation. Ultimately, as our genetics are distributed through the animal protein supply chain, our customers produce milk and meat more efficiently and sustainably as they produce animal protein to help nourish the world.

^{1 FAO report on the future of food and agriculture 2017 identifies around 800 million people in the world suffer from hunger.}

Sustainable innovation through our R&D

At Genus, R&D is also central to our sustainability efforts. Farmers have applied their animal and breeding knowledge to improve our food for centuries. Genus aims to further enhance the quality, quantity and carbon performance of milk and meat by harnessing the information contained in the genetic data linked to our animals and applying this to increase the welfare, productivity, resilience of the next animal generation.

We believe our R&D innovations provide considerable benefits to our customers – such as improving animal performance through better feed conversion, animal welfare through disease resistance, and carbon emissions through less GHG emissions per kg of meat or litre of milk.

By helping farmers produce more protein from fewer animals, and by breeding animals that are better matched to local climatic constraints, we are strengthening the resilience of food systems to climate change and, at the same time, reducing agricultural GHG emissions.