Prospects for improving the nutritional quality of dairy and meat products.

Knowledge of the function of human and animal genes and their interactions is rapidly increasing as a result of the completion of sequencing efforts for the human, bovine and other genomes. Through transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics, we have the capacity to study the health effects of food compounds at the molecular level. The same tools that can assist the understanding of nutrigenomics in humans can also be applied to producing animal-derived foods with desired capacities to alter gene expression in humans. This, essentially, represents food taking another major step in value through the personalisation of health and nutrition. In its own right, nutrigenomics offers the potential to improve animal production enterprises through major health and productivity gains.