A new international infrastructure for beef cattle breeding

Implications • Ireland has established a new information infrastructure for cattle breeding and has performance data on a large percentage of commercial beef and dairy cattle, in addition to performance data on seedstock as found in many countries. This structure facilitates genetic evaluation for animals, of all breeds and crosses, in terms of their ability to generate profi ts from milk and beef production under Irish commercial conditions. • Interbeef is being established to facilitate the sharing of beef data internationally between like-minded organizations and to provide more accurate and extensive genetic evaluations in the base and scale of each participating beef population. • Interbeef has the potential to provide beef farmers served by participating organizations with much better information for selecting animals for importation from other countries. Such collaboration will enable beef producers to better address the range of effi ciency and environmental challenges they face.