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food safety, and healch-relaCed research. Furchemore, it seens Chat the 

 competitive grants program (as generally envisioned where all legitimate 

 research institutions are eligible but the best scientific proposals are 

 funded, irrespective of locatlonal concentration of funds) would be the best 

 funding arrangement for carrying out these plans and priorities . Proposals 

 should be for reasonably long term (3-5 years) projects, and proposal review 

 panels should be comprised of scientists from land-grant and nonland- grant 

 institutions in order to help Insure ties to the frontiers of science. 



Third, I believe that a new research consortium should be established 

 in applied livestock research for the SAES and USDA research system to set 

 research priorities and to administer a grants program. This is an area of 

 public research where it seems to me that the efficiency resource use can only 

 be Increased by establishing very strong incentives for SAES and USDA 

 researchers to work together, reduce duplication, and conduct research leading 

 to definitive results. My reasons are (1) livestock production for broilers, 

 swine, dairy, and cattle finishing have become quite concentrated 

 geographically over the past 40 years, (2) large animal livestock research 

 requires a relatively large and sustained investment in animals, their care, 

 and facilities and (3) livestock research results, at least for these 

 commodities, spillover relatively widely in usefulness to large geographic 

 areas. (See Huffman and Evenson 1993, Chapter 7.) These reasons follow 

 largely from production of these commodities not being closely tied directly to 

 land area, as opposed to range livestock and all field crops. Furthermore, 

 part of state livestock research is conducted at SAES and part by veterinary 

 medicine schools and attempts to reduce research costs for large animal 

 experiments can easily lead to sample sizes that are too small for reaching any 

 definitive conclusions. 



