North Carolina Food Animal Initiative

Establishing North Carolina as the world leader in food-animal biosciences.

A Grand Challenge in Animal Agriculture

North Carolina is a recognized leader in food-animal production. In 2024, North Carolina agriculture and agribusiness reached a new peak of $111 billion in economic impact, with 70% of that impact attributed to food animal sectors in livestock, dairy and poultry. NC State University’s Food Animal Initiative (FAI) is committed to ensuring that workforce development and research in food animal agriculture remains tantamount to the university’s mission to support and advance the agriculture industry.

At North Carolina State University, we’re helping North Carolina become the world leader in food-animal sciences by coordinating new research with existing, proven infrastructure. The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) and the College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) have partnered to lead this interdisciplinary initiative. As our work grows, we’ll enlist the support of our partners at NC State and other land grant universities, government and industry.

PhD student Aoi Nakanishi-Hester working in the lab

Research

Interdisciplinary teams drive innovation, collaboration and research-based solutions.

Collaboration at work

Lauren Buslinger walks veterinary technician students from Cape Fear Community College through some of the finer points of working with beef cattle at the TAU.

Education

We are committed to recruiting, training and retaining the future food animal workforce.

Developing tomorrow’s workforce

Extension

We engage with food animal stakeholders to translate science into solutions for the food animal industry and its suppliers.

Serving our stakeholders

Feeding 9.5 Billion by 2050

Requires a 73% Increase in Animal Food Production.
Our Initiative Will Make N.C. a Leader in Feeding the World.

A black and white cow wearing a teal electronic monitor stares at a camera behind a gate.

Cow Collar Clues: Electronic Monitoring Helps Keep NC State Dairy Herd Hardy

In the year that NC State’s new dairy facility has been cooling cows, providing state-of-the-art milking technology and giving veterinary students experience in best industry practices, the collars around the cows’ necks have been communicating with computers. When dairy manager Mike Veach gets the resulting report each morning, he knows Cow 708 has been lying…

One Committed and Caring NC State Veterinary Student, So Many Choices

Compassion, community and care are every bit as foundational to Joseph Richardson’s core as calcium and carbon. His maternal grandfather, likely the first Black physician in rural Hertford County, North Carolina, opened his clinic in 1938, served his country in the medical corps during World War II and then spent five more decades caring for…

Kaitlyn Valenza, left, collaborates in the dry lab dedicated to the RABapp developed by Dr. Gustavo Machado.

NC State CVM Invests in First Dry Lab to Support Work on Controlling Disease Spread

Recognizing veterinary medicine’s increasingly important role in safeguarding public health, the NC State College of Veterinary Medicine has created a cutting-edge dry laboratory that will accelerate the work of Dr. Gustavo Machado, an associate professor of emerging and transboundary diseases whose research centers on preventing the spread of deadly diseases among livestock farms. The lab…

Contact

For more information, contact Celeste Brogdon.

Celeste D. Brogdon
celeste_brogdon@ncsu.edu
(919) 515-7857