FAnGR Monitoring - In compliance with their international commitments to biodiversity Defra is obliged to monitor the population sizes of livestock breeds in the UK. Traditionally this was done via a once every ten year census carried out on paper. Grassroots worked with the FAnGR committee on a pilot scheme and now provides the majority of the statistical data annually. This is taken from the Grassroots breed society databases and can be viewed here.
Biobank Inventory - In June 2026 Grassroots was commissioned by Defra to create the first national inventory of cryogenically stored material. It is hoped that this will form the basis of a conversation about the national need for a livestock biobank in parallel to the existing biobank for crop plants.
