Newsletter of the LowInputBreeds project. Issue 4. EU project LowInputBreeds - Development of integrated livestock breeding and management strategies to improve animal health, product quality and performance in European organic and ‘low input’ milk, meat and egg production

The fourth newsletter of the LowInputBreeds project reports on the successful first project symposium which took place in March in Wageningen, the Netherlands, focussing on ethical issues in animal breeding. Furthermore the newsletter contains an article on small ruminant production systems in Crete, and the traits required in order to improve production efficiency and product quality in traditional low-input dairy sheep production systems. And like every newsletter, we report progress in the four LowInputBreeds subprojects. Already now we would like to draw your attention to the next LowInputBreeds conference, which will take place in spring 2012 in Tunisia. More information is available in the last page of this newsletter and updates will be posted at the project website www.lowinputbreeds.org. Please also note that in June 2011 the course "Genomic Selection in Livestock" will take place in Davos, Switzerland, one of the LowInputBreeds workshops for early stage researchers and agricultural advisors/technologists to facilitate an exchange of ideas/opinions and know-how and encourage potential future collaboration. Finally we would like to announce Carlo Leifert has handed over project coordination responsibility to Gillian Butler, also from Newcastle University. She is not new to the project – she is responsible for work package 1.2 on the development of improved cross-breeding strategies