From Farm to Fork: Proteomics in Farm Animal Care and Food Production

© 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Proteomics has become an important analytical tool in the field of farm animals and their products. A general overview on approaches, sample types, and current animal protein and peptide databases is given. Food quality is closely connected with animal health; therefore this introductory chapter summarizes where proteomics can be of help to investigate food issues related to the live animal. This comprises animal health-related aspects, mainly stress, welfare, and influence of management, and production-related issues. The latter refers to breeds and traits, the influence of nutrition and metabolic aspects, as well as studies to detect fraud (use of growth promoters) and to improve reproduction. Though not all aspects are equally well studied by proteomics yet, approaches in this field show great promise.