Economic Value of Leptin Genotype Information in Beef Cattle

Abstract

Recent research developments in genetics have found variations to exist among mammals in the way they produce and react to leptin, a protein that works to control appetite and weight. These traits and others linked to leptin are highly important in commercial livestock production. Due to advances in technology, testing to determine an animal's genotype has become a relatively cheap and easy task. The purpose of this study is to determine the economic value that can be elicited from knowing differences in leptin genotype of beef cattle. The study implements static and dynamic market simulations to determine if variations in profitability and revenue exist across distinct genotypes in a set of 1,668 commercially fed beef cattle. Results reveal significant differences in profitability across genotypes. The difference in per-head profit between the best and worst performing genotypes is over $20 in the static analysis and over $52 in the dynamic analysis.