COWS ARE SPECIAL. As ruminants, they eat grass and other plants that are inedible to people, transforming forage into steak and hamburgers and other tasty high-protein beef products.
Over the past few decades, the beef industry has made significant improvements in productivity—generating more food from fewer numbers of cattle. Better breeding and other innovations in animal science research have played a starring role in these advances.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture has awarded the University of California, Davis, $2.5 million over four years for a national cow genomics project.
