HISTORY, MANDATE, AND OBJECTIVES

CGIL was created by an act of the Senate of the University of Guelph in June 1984. Although a centre, CGIL is still an integral part of the Department of Animal and Poultry Science, its teaching and graduate programs. Efforts were to be made to foster collaborative research with statisticians, economists, computer scientists, molecular geneticists, and veterinarians. Research was also to involve extensive interaction with industry personnel in Canada and with scientists in provincial and federal governments. Livestock, in this document, includes poultry, aquaculture, dairy cattle, beef cattle, swine, sheep, and horses.

The objectives of CGIL as set out in the documents presented to Senate were:

1.

To enlarge and accelerate the University's long-term commitment to excellence of research and development in the field of animal breeding and genetics of livestock improvement.

2.

To facilitate effective long-term financing for research in genetic improvement of livestock, thus increasing the efficiency of existing research programs and providing greater flexibility for development of new programs to be applied in industry.

3.

To provide a Centre for advanced training in the application of quantitative genetics to livestock improvement.

4.

To provide provincial and federal government agencies in the Canadian animal breeding industry with a centre to which these organizations may bring their problems in livestock breeding, contract for research and in which they may encourage technical personnel to work in concert with an active research group on solution of specific problems having to do with livestock improvement.

5.

To provide leadership for change and updating of existing programs and to otherwise ensure that Canada continues in an advantageous position in the breeding of livestock and in provision of semen, embryos and animal breeding technology for export around the world.

6.

To continue to serve the livestock industries by provision of genetic ratings on sires, dams and young animals for breeding purposes for traits of economic importance as well as for total economic merit.

7.

To continue and expand collaborative research programs with departments of Veterinary Microbiology and Immunology, Mathematics and Statistics, Agricultural Economics and Extension Education, and Computing and Information Science as relates to animals.