Embryos to gain more of sheep market

Press, 15 May 1985, Page 29

Embryos to gain more of sheep market

NZPA-Reuter Bahrain A team of Australian agricultural scientists is collecting sheep embryos, in Cyprus, in the hope of boosting Australia’s share of the Middle East live-sheep market, Australian officials said. The embryos will be deep-frozen and taken to Australia’s maximum-secur-ity quarantine station on the Cocos Islands, in the Indian Ocean, for implanting into Australian breeds. Mr John Lightfoot, a sheep expert and a senior agricultural officer with the Western Australian Government, told Reuters three breeds of fat-tailed sheep popular in the Middle East had originally been selected. “We are treating this as a research programme to investigate the potential for breeding fat-tailed sheep with their cousins in Australia for live export back to Middle East countries,” he said. Mr Lightfoot said the first phase of the project, being funded by the Western Aus- ' tralian Government and the

Australian meat industry, was to take embryos to the Cocos Islands for implantation there and the eventual development of an Australian fat-tailed breed of sheep. The second phase covered co-operative research in the Middle East countries “to look at cross-breeding of fat-tailed sheep and Australian breeds, the product and carcase characteristics and consumer acceptability.” Mr David Paxton, the Australian agricultural trade commissioner for the Middle East, said present Australian live-sheep exports to the area took in the lowser end of the market.

Finding a fat-tailed breed preferred by Middle East consumers and raised in Australia would give it better access to the middle and upper market sectors. Mr Lightfoot said the whole programme was quite simple in concept, but it was only now coming about because the import of new breeds into Australia liad been banned since the mid--1950s for health reasons.