Context

The Scottish beef industry is underperforming, negatively affecting economic, environmental and social sustainability. Additionally, the potential impact of Brexit, with the proposed reduction and removal of tariffs on imported beef products means that there is an urgency behind the need to protect our Scottish farmers and consumers, by ensuring that the Scotch brand has adequate safeguards against imitation product.
The project will investigate the ability to relate phenotypic performance of cattle offspring to maternal DNA, AS WELL AS proving that a full integrity meat supply chain can be delivered through the use of maternal DNA. The project is designed to prove a concept and, if successful, will develop a blueprint for an industry wide project which is intended to provide full meat traceability to the Scotch brand and to provide the world’s largest database of cattle Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs- essentially what creates genetic variation)  to permit fully accurate breeding and cross-breeding, delivering significant economic and environmental benefit to the Scottish beef industry.