The UQ Animal Genetics Laboratory (formerly the Veterinary Blood Grouping and Cattle DNA Typing Laboratories), is a part of the School of Veterinary Science, within the Faculty of Natural Resources, Agriculture and Veterinary Science.

The original Cattle Blood Typing Laboratory was established at Pinjarra Hills by Dr Kevin Bell and colleagues in 1964 and was an international leader in the field of blood typing research. The Laboratory provided a commercial service to cattle producers and blood typing became an important tool for breed societies to help ensure the integrity of their pedigrees. This became particularly important with the increasing use of embryo transfer in the late 1970s and 1980s.  The laboratory also performed diagnostic tests for bovine freemartinism.

The Cattle DNA Typing Unit was set up at St Lucia in 1992 by Dr Kevin Bell and Dr Dianne Vankan to provide an alternative to blood typing that increased accuracy by utilising the latest technology developments, and avoided some of the logistic issues inherent to serological tests. This unit is still the core of the Animal Genetics Laboratory and DNA technology based on microsatellite testing has completely replaced blood typing around the world now.  As a consequence, routine blood typing activities at Pinjarra Hills have now ceased although occasional "emergency" samples will continue to be processed.

The Animal Genetics Laboratory has always maintained strong collaborative ties with other international and local laboratories whose focus is on research and development of genetic tests for animal species.  These collaborative ties have led to our current suite of diagnostic tests for cattle and parentage tests for cattle, buffalo, and alpaca.