Minoan terracotta bull’s head, 14th-century BC (via Christie’s).

Animal diseases cost cash-strapped African farmers about $300 billion a year in lost income and veterinary bills. Now scientists are proactively breeding livestock with defenses against these pests before they strike.

Scientists from . . . CGIAR . . . are setting up a “preemptive breeding” program to develop livestock with resistance to potential widespread outbreaks of currently localized diseases to help reduce some of the losses that would occur.

‘Most of the world’s 38 billion livestock are kept in Africa where they face threats from diseases, reduced grazing land and a lack of vaccines. Livestock in Europe or the U.S., by contrast, are rarely lacking in food and medicine, says Okeyo Mwai, a livestock geneticist at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Kenya. “Most of the problems are in Africa where the costs of treating diseases are huge. As…