Alison Glasgow will be joining the team of the British Limousin Cattle Society (BLCS), the UK’s largest beef breed Society, in the position of Technical Manager.
A senior position, the newly created role will see Alison have the wide ranging responsibility to manage, initiate, develop, promote and progress the technical work and objectives of the British Limousin Cattle Society.
In making the announcement, Iain Kerr, the BLCS Chief Executive said; “We are delighted to welcome Alison on board and look at this as a very exciting move that will strengthen the breed and Society as we move forward. Well-known in pedigree and commercial circles and across the industry, Alison is a high-calibre appointment who brings a wealth of relevant skills and experience.”
“The Society’s on-going aim is to drive breed improvement, produce cattle that meet the market place, and to introduce the initiatives and services that add value and profitability for pedigree and commercial producers and at every industry level. Alison’s appointment is a significant step toward meeting these forward objectives,” he said.
A farmer’s daughter originally from a mixed livestock and arable farm near Kelso in the Scottish Borders, Alison presently works with Signet Breeding Services, a company she joined in 1997 as part of their on-farm scanning team. For the last ten years she has been a Breed Specialist with Signet, delivering its performance recording schemes to sheep and beef breeders & their customers throughout the UK. Since 2007 Alison has been Signet’s Limousin breed specialist and in that time, and with collective effort by all stakeholders parties, membership of the recording scheme has increased by approximately 20% to now represent just over 50% of all pedigree Limousin calves registered annually.
Speaking of her appointment, Alison Glasgow said: “The BLCS is focused on breed improvement and is looking to introduce several new and exciting initiatives that are the first of their kind in the UK. From April 2013, the Society will bring a new approach to the provision of performance recording services. The BASCO livestock database will continue to be developed as a platform to gather and report pedigree, performance, and genomic data. Feed efficiency is another identified area, critical to profitability that the Society is looking at. Incorporating international Limousin performance data from connected herd books into the performance evaluation is on-going.”
“The Society is also now half-way through one of the most exciting developments in UK beef breeding to date; an initiative working to incorporate records from BCMS and the processing sector to produce highly accurate EBVs for carcase traits. This has never been done before. The partners in this initiative are ABP and SAC, the end result of which will be development of a ‘genomic key’ for the
Limousin breed, which will allow highly accurate breeding predictions for market relevant traits to be made from samples of DNA. I am really delighted to be part of all of this and look forward to working with the breed and its customers to produce high quality, future-proofed Limousin breeding stock”.
Alison, who will work from her present base in Scotland, will commence her position with the Society in January 2013. Up until then she will continue in her role with Signet which will see her in attendance at the forthcoming round of pedigree sales at both Carlisle and Stirling.
