Cattle feeding

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There are different systems of feeding cattle in

Grazing by cattle is practiced in

In this system, cattle are primarily fed on pastures,

Grass-fed

Grass and other forage compose most or the majority of a grass-fed diet. There is debate whether cattle should be raised on diets primarily composed of pasture (grass) or on a concentrated diet of grain,

Cattle called corn-fed, grain-fed or corn-finished are typically raised on maize, soy and other types of feed. Some corn-fed cattle are raised in concentrated animal feeding operations known as feed lots.

In the United States, dairy cattle are often supplemented with grain to increase the efficiency of production and reduce the area needed to support the energy requirements of the herd.

A high-energy diet increases milk output, measured in pounds or kilograms of milk per head per day.^[9]

Barley-fed

In Western Canada beef cattle are usually finished on a barley-based diet.^[10]

Flax

In some parts of the world

Antibiotics

A critical journalist has claimed that the lower population density in free-range animals need decreased antibiotics usage, and has conjectured that cattle would not get sick if they were not fed a corn-based diet.[9] However, bovine respiratory disease, the most common reason for antibiotic therapy, has risk factors common in both forms of production (feedlot and pasture finished).^[19]

Safety

Due to concerns about antibiotics residues getting into the milk or meat of cattle, there are regulatory agencies and measures in place in order to ensure that foods produced do not contain antibiotics at a level which will cause harm to consumers in the United States and Canada.^[17][20]

Growth stimulants

The use of supplemental growth hormones is controversial. The benefits of using growth hormones includes improved feed efficiency, carcass quality and rate of muscle development. The cattle industry takes the position that the use of growth hormones allows plentiful meats to be sold for affordable prices.^[21] Using hormones in beef cattle costs $1.50 and adds between 40 and 50 lb (18 and 23 kg) to the weight of a steer at slaughter, for a return of at least $25.^[22]

There are three natural hormones (estradiol, progesterone, and testosterone), naturally present in cattle and humans, their synthetic alternatives (zeranol, melengestrol acetate, and trenbolone acetate) have been approved by the VDD for use in Canadian beef production.^[25] Studies show that the contribution of hormones from beef consumption is minuscule compared to the quantities produced naturally in the human body.^[17][25] For comparison, an adult male will produce 136,000 ng of estrogen on a given day; whereas the estrogen levels present in a 6-ounce serving of beef from a treated animal is only approximately 3.8 ng. In other words, a human being will produce almost 36,000 times the amount of estrogen in one day that would be present in a piece of beef produced with the growth hormones.^[25] Thus, current scientific evidence is insufficient to support the hypothesis that any diseases are caused by ingested hormones due to hormonal substance use in animals.^[17][21][25] However, the differences between levels in treated and non-treated animals were deemed significant enough for the EU to ban imports of U.S. beef.^{[citation needed]}

Drought fodder for extensive rangeland agriculture

Increasing intensities and frequencies of drought events put rangeland agriculture under pressure in semi-arid and arid geographic areas. Innovative emergency fodder production concepts have been reported, such as bush-based animal fodder production in Namibia. During extended dry spells, farmers have turned to use woody biomass fiber from encroacher bush as a primary source of cattle feed, adding locally available supplements for nutrients as well as to improve palatability.^{[26][27][28][29]}

Effects of feed on health

Flax seeds suppress inflammatory effects from bovine respiratory disease (BRD) often affecting stressed cattle during transport and processing. BRD can lead to lung tissue damage and impair the performance of the cattle leading to a low final body mass at slaughter, or premature death.^[11]

Effects of feed on product

Marbling and fats

Most grass-fed beef is leaner than feedlot beef, lacking

A study showed that tissue lipids of North American and African ruminants were similar to pasture-fed cattle, but dissimilar to grain-fed cattle. The lipid composition of wild ruminant tissues may serve as a model for dietary lipid recommendations in treating and preventing chronic disease.[31]

Dairy

In 2021, food management system expert Sylvain Charlebois remarked on the industry's use of palm oil, given as palmitic acid supplements, to augment the output of milk product: they "are marketed as a way to increase milk output and boost fat content" but a "review by the Dairy Research and Extension Consortium of Alberta found that butter made from cows fed palm oil remains difficult to spread at room temperature."^[32] Consumers were dismayed because the physical characteristics of the dairy products had undergone a significant change, notably in increased hardness and increased melting point of the palm oil supplemented butter, although an item published in The Globe and Mail attempted to blame the consumer for the actions of the producer.^[33] Charlebois noted that this was not beneficial to the consumer, who was surprised and had not been notified of the social contract variation to his disadvantage.^[32]

Taste

The cow's diet affects the flavor of the resultant meat and milk. A 2003 Colorado State University study found that 80% of consumers in the Denver-Colorado area preferred the taste of United States corn-fed beef to Australian grass-fed beef, and negligible difference in taste preference compared to Canadian barley-fed beef, though the cattle's food was not the only difference in the beef tested,^[34] nor is Denver a representative sample of the world beef market, so the results are inconclusive.

Remarkably, in some circumstances, cattle are fed wine or beer. It is believed that this improves the taste of the beef. This technique has been used both in Japan and France.^[35]

Nutrition

Animal products for human consumption from animals raised on pasture have shown nutritional differences from those of animals raised on other feedstuffs.^{[36][37][38][39]}

Health

E. coli

]

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy

Main article: Bovine spongiform encephalopathy

Meat and bone meal can be a risk factor for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), when healthy animals consume tainted tissues from infected animals. People concerned about Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD), which is also a spongiform encephalopathy, may favor grass-fed cattle for this reason. In the United States, this risk is relatively low as feeding of protein sources from any ruminant to another ruminant has been banned since 1997.^[44] The problem becomes more complicated as other feedstuffs containing animal by-products are still allowed to be fed to other non-ruminants (chickens, cats, dogs, horses, pigs, etc.). Therefore, at a feed mill mixing feed for pigs, for instance, there is still the possibility of cross-contamination of feed going to cattle.^[45] Since only a tiny amount of the contaminating prion begins the cascading brain disease, any amount of mixed feed could cause many animals to become infected.^{[citation needed]} This was the only traceable link among the cattle with BSE in Canada that led to the recent US embargo of Canadian beef.^{[citation needed]} No cases of BSE have been reported so far in Australia. This is largely due to Australia's strict quarantine and biosecurity rules that prohibit beef imports from countries known to be infected with BSE.

However, according to a report filed in The Australian on February 25, 2010, those rules were suddenly relaxed and the process to submit beef products from known BSE-infected countries was allowed (pending an application process).^[46] But less than a week later, Tony Burke, the Australian Minister For Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry swiftly overturned the decision and placed a 'two year stop' on all fresh and chilled beef products destined for Australia from BSE known countries of origin, thereby relaxing fears held by Australians that contaminated US beef would find its way onto Australian supermarket shelves after a long absence.^[47][48]

Soybean meal is cheap and plentiful in the United States. As a result, the use of animal byproduct feeds was never common, as it was in Europe. However, U.S. regulations only partially prohibit the use of animal byproducts in feed. In 1997, regulations prohibited the feeding of mammalian byproducts to ruminants such as cattle and goats. However, the byproducts of ruminants can still be legally fed to pets or other livestock such as pigs and poultry such as chickens. In addition, it is legal for ruminants to be fed byproducts from some of these animals.^[49]

Campylobacter

Campylobacter, a bacterium that can cause another foodborne illness resulting in nausea, vomiting, fever, abdominal pain, headache and muscle pain, was found by Australian researchers to be carried by 58% of cattle raised in feedlots versus only 2% of pasture raised and finished cattle.^[50]

Environmental concerns

Main article: Grazing § Environmental considerations

For environmental reasons, a study by Burney et al. advocates

riparian areas.^[52][53][54]

Country-specific

The examples and perspective in this section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. You may improve this section, discuss the issue on the talk page, or create a new section, as appropriate. (August 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Beef production tends to be concentrated, with the top six producers—the U.S., the European Union, Brazil, Australia, Argentina, and Russia—accounting for about 60% of global production. Significant shifts among producers have occurred over time. Cattle production worldwide is differentiated by animal genetics and feeding methods, resulting in differing quality types. Cattle are basically residual claimants to crop or land resources. Those countries with excess or low-value land tend to grass-feed their cattle herds, while those countries with excess feed grains, such as the U.S. and Canada, finish cattle with a grain ration. Grain-fed cattle have more internal fat (i.e., marbling) which results in a more tender meat than forage-fed cattle of a similar age. In some Asian countries such as Japan, which is not a grain-surplus country, tastes and preferences have encouraged feeding grain to cattle, but at a high cost since the grain must be imported.^[55]

Canada

The majority of beef cattle in

Western Canadian beef is finished on a barley-based diet. This rule is not absolute, however, as producers in both regions will alter the mix of feed grains according to changes in feed prices. Research by the Ontario government claims that, while Alberta beef producers have organized a successful marketing campaign promoting Alberta's barley-fed beef, corn-fed and barley-fed beef have a similar cost, quality, and taste.^[10]

Regulations on

synthetic hormones used in livestock

.

The Animal Nutrition Association of Canada has developed a comprehensive

Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP) system for animal feed production called Feed Assure. This mandatory HACCP-based program includes a requirement for independent audits of feed mills including production processes and record keeping. The Canadian Cattlemen's Association has also developed a HACCP based on-farm food safety

program.

A complete HACCP system is mandatory for all federally inspected establishments. These systems include prerequisite programs, which are general procedures or good manufacturing practices that enhance food safety for all meat production processes. HACCP plans build on this foundation and are designed to control potential hazards for specific production processes.^[56]

Alberta beef

Alberta has become the center of the western Canadian beef industry and has 70% of the feedlot capacity and 70% of the beef processing capacity in Canada.^[57]

The Canadian province of

corn belt because the climate is generally too cool and too dry to grow corn for grain. The adjacent western provinces and northern US states are similar, so the use of corn as cattle feed has been limited at these northern latitudes. As a result, few cattle are raised on corn as a feed. The majority are raised on grass and finished on cold-tolerant grains such as barley.^[62] This has become a marketing feature of the beef.^[10]

The Alberta beef label found on some beef is not an

western provinces or in the northwestern United States. These cattle are generally processed similarly, and are said to be distinct from the typically corn-fed beef produced in most of the US and Ontario. Under World Trade Organization rules, all of the beef produced in Alberta can be considered to be Alberta beef.^[57]

United States

According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) there are 25–33 million feed cattle moving through custom and commercial cattle feed yards annually. The monthly USDA "Cattle on Feed Report" is available for public viewing.^[63]

Labelling

The USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) released a revised proposal for a grass-fed meat label for its process-verified labelling program in May 2006.^[64] This established a standard definition for the "grass-fed" claim which required continuous access to pasture and animals not being fed grain or grain-based products.^[65] The Union of Concerned Scientists, which in general supported the labelling proposal, claimed that the label, which contained the clause "consumption of grain in the immature stage is acceptable", allowed for "feed harvesting or stockpiling methods that might include significant amounts of grain" because the term "immature" was not clearly defined.^[66] The label was revoked by the USDA on January 12, 2016, claiming it had no jurisdiction over what should be FDA regulations.^[67]

Until 2015, the US had

mandatory country-of-origin labeling (COOL) rules requiring that foreign beef be labelled as such under a complicated set of rules, but in 2015 the World Trade Organization ruled that the US was a violation of international trade law, so the US law was repealed.^[68]

See also

• Free range
• Fodder
• Hay

References