Conventional economic evaluations of crossbreeding programmes have overestimated their benefits by ignoring subsidies, the increased costs of management such as veterinary support services, and the higher levels of risk and socio-environmental costs associated with the loss of the indigenous...

Concentration on elite breeding lines has endangered a number of traditional dairy breeds. Although several of those breeds are known for superior functional traits such as robustness, they are increasingly replaced by Holstein cows. A discrete choice experiment with 159 breeders revealed the...