Paul VanRaden, Ph.D., Ransom L. Baldwin VI, Ph.D., Curtis P. Van Tassell, Ph.D. and the ARS Dairy Cattle Genetic Enhancement Team  

The U.S. dairy cattle industry has experienced remarkable productivity and economic growth during the past few decades due to major advances in genetic engineering and other critical scientific breakthroughs despite a significant decrease in dairy farms and cows.  

Three Department of Agriculture scientists, Curt Van Tassell, Paul VanRaden and Ransom Baldwin, have played a leading role in this effort by helping revolutionize dairy cattle breeding, improve milk production and enhance cattle health in support of the U.S. industry that sells more than $8 billion in products annually. 

“Their combined achievements in genomic selection, mitigating genetic diseases and disorders, new trait development and DNA technology infrastructure have fundamentally changed dairy cattle breeding worldwide and transformed the U.S. dairy industry,” said Caird Rexroad, the acting deputy administrator for animal production and protection at USDA’s Agricultural Research Service. 

Due to the genetic and other advanced research of the USDA scientists, breeders and farmers can now identify the highest milk producing cows and breed them with bulls that have high ratings based on their pedigrees and genetic testing. 

On average, each U.S. dairy cow now produces 2,799 gallons of milk annually, doubling the average of 1,377 gallons since 1980 due in large part to the genetic engineering in which the three USDA scientists have played a significant role in advancing. 

The list of benefits to the cattle industry—which supports more than 3 million jobs and $198 billion in annual U.S. wages, according to the International Dairy Foods Association—is long. Economic losses from diseases are down more than 66% thanks to the team’s genetic discoveries and cows now consume 90 million fewer pounds of feed every year due to their breeding advancements. 

VanRaden is credited with developing genomic prediction methodology that replaced traditional evaluation methods and has allowed farmers to more precisely identify superior animals as calves. 

Van Tassell has led an international consortium that developed a low-cost DNA chip that decodes an animal’s genome at more than 50,000 locations to predict future milk and health traits. Baldwin has focused on the intersection of nutrition, physiology and biological processes to manage and breed cattle for better long-term performance. 

Steven Moeller, the ARS national program leader, said Van Tassell, Van Raden and Baldwin have been “the intellectual leaders across multiple scientific disciplines and the driving force behind major advances in the dairy industry.” 

Van Raden said the team has analyzed hundreds of millions of records to help determine which genes have positive and negative effects on cow health and productivity, describing his role in the scientific advancements as an “extremely rewarding experience.” 

Van Tassell said he is “humbled” to be part of a team that has had such a major impact industry and the public, while Baldwin called the impact of their combined work “phenomenal.” 

“This group continuously engaged in cutting edge research and tested, evaluated and made decisions that have been widely adopted in the United States and around the world,” said Baldwin.