The following is a summary of the discussions held during the meeting of the DairyGen Council
held on Tuesday, October 18th, 2011 at the Dairy Farmers of Ontario office in Mississauga, Ontario.
This summary will be presented for approval to the Canadian Dairy Network (CDN) Board of
Directors at its next meeting on December 19-20, 2011.
• The main agenda item for this meeting was the review of seven Letters of Intent (LOI) and one
full research proposal submitted by researchers across Canada in response to the list of
research priorities distributed following the February 2011 meeting of the DairyGen Council.
Following a thorough review of each 6-page LOI and the full proposal, the following was
agreed: a) three of the seven LOI were declined because they were not within DairyGen
mandate; b) three of the seven LOI were deemed of potential interest for DairyGen priorities,
and researchers will be asked to submit a full proposal; c) the seventh LOI was accepted
directly without a full proposal due to the importance of the project, the small amount of funding
requested, and the fact that this will not qualify for NSERC matching support; and d) the full
proposal was of interest to DairyGen, but there was a need of rewriting following some
recommendations provided in the discussion at the meeting. The submitted full proposals will
be scientifically reviewed by external and internal/committee reviewers for consideration by
DairyGen in February 2012. All projects recommended for funding by DairyGen will then be
submitted to NSERC for their external review and presented to the CDN Board for approval.
• Financially, Brian Van Doormaal provided an update on the projected revenue and expenses
for the year ending March 31, 2011 as well as the budget for 2011-2012 as approved by the
CDN Board. In summary, with the carry over from the past year, it was noted that significant
funds are available for new project proposals to be considered during 2012.
• Committee members reviewed a series of annual progress reports or final reports for projects
receiving DairyGen funding support.
• Ms. Pauline Bilodeau has changed her job focus within AAFC, and Ms. Shelley Crabtree from
DFC will take over some of the responsibilities previously held by Pauline, including the
dissemination of dairy cattle research results to the industry and management of the Canadian
Dairy Research Portal (https://www.dairyresearch.ca/).
• The committee members discussed opportunities for research stemming from lameness and
foot lesion data collected by hoof trimmers in various provinces. It was suggested that CDN
could allocate funds to hire a person to prepare an industry led initiative to define data collection
standardisation, data compliance guidelines, development costs and seek appropriate funding.
• It was agreed that several DairyGen members would participate in the Dairy Research Cluster
Planning meeting organized by DFC in Montreal on November 16-17, 2011.
• The next meeting of the DairyGen Council will be held on Thursday, February 16th, 2012 at the
Dairy Farmers of Ontario office in Mississauga, Ontario.
If there are any questions, concerns or comments regarding the recommendations of the DairyGen
Council, as outlined in this summary, please feel free to contact committee members listed at
http://www.cdn.ca/committees-dairygen.php or by contacting Brian Van Doormaal directly at
Canadian Dairy Network.
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