Whither animal nutrition

Abstract

Increased livestock production in developed countries, achieved largely by genetic improvement, improved feeding and disease control is likely to be maintained by technologies which include the use of transgenic animals, hormonal manipulation and the better definition of nutrient requirements. The latter objective will be facilitated by developments in quantitative nutrition which include improved analytical techniques such as NMR and NIR, and new methods for the continuous measurement of energy expenditure in defined tissues, and in whole animals. These new methods based on the measurement of blood flow by ultrasound, and of blood oxygen content by fibre optic technology, supplement arterio-venous difference and isotope dilution approaches which have proved so successful in recent decades.