Russ Sanders, director of animal feeds for Optimum Quality Grains, urged feed industry representatives and farmers to "look beyond the hype" of biotechnology at the Animal Feed Industry Expo May 18, 1999, in Minneapolis, MN. Despite the vision of fields of "nutriceutical" crops grown to produce human medicines, the primary focus over the next five to seven years will be on crops genetically engineered to enhance meat animal production.

"The meat currently represents only about 20 percent of the value of a pre-cooked, boneless meat product," Sanders said. Growing crops designed with traits that make livestock feeding more efficient will help producers recapture some of that value.

But the "price of admission" to a market where farmers can obtain a healthy premium for their crops will be the loss of an "anonymous food system," Sanders said. "There will be a lot more interest in tracking the origin of meat products not just back to the finishing barn, but back to the feedmill and to the field where the feed that animal consumed was produced," Sanders said.

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