There is no reason to produce beef other than to satisfy the eating quality expectations of the beef consumer, at every occasion, price competitively. No If’s, No Buts, No Maybes.
Beef’s market share in Australia (and all other westernised cultures) has been on a steep decline since the 1970’s. Back then, beef was number 1 when compared to chicken and pork, with Domestic Disappearance numbers indicating Australians were consuming somewhere about 70kg per head per annum. In 2016 this figure had dropped to 27kg. We really do have a problem.
THE SEEDSTOCK PRODUCERS ROLE
The Price Competitive component of our theme for the day is a great foundation for the SEEDSTOCK PRODUCER to build his/her operation on.
- i) Fertility: Pregnancy rate is the starting point re the optimisation of any
Beef enterprises profitability. Jim Bradford of the GUTHRIE CENTRE, summarised “Fertility as the Governor of Growth”. In other words, he is suggesting Fertility will determine the number of kilograms of beef an enterprise has the potential of producing. Further this statement introduces the concept of cows for country; bulls for markets. The implication being, let the fertility rate determine optimum cow size, milk production levels.
- ii) Calving Ease: Live calves born has a huge impact on Bottom Line performance, as DR REX BUTTERFIELD so aptly put it “Dead calves have distressingly poor growth rates.”
iii) Growth Rate: Again beef’s price competitiveness at the counter is very much dependent on growth rate – birth to turn off. Growth rate, (Pregnancy to Weaning), is very much a function of milk production. So Fertility, Calving Ease and weaning weight performance are Maternal issues not to be forgotten yet left to another day, hopefully early autumn next year.
SALEABLE RETAIL YIELD
There are many steps involved in the determination of ultimate Retail Yield – Mating Decisions, Joining, Calving, Weaning, Growing, Finishing (Feedlot/Pasture), Delivery to slaughter, Slaughter, Boning, Retail Preparation. It is no wonder the task of producing and delivering worthwhile information from Retail to those making the mating decisions to produce the seedstock to go to the commercial cow/calf operators. Importantly there is much to be done at the various ‘stations’ along this ‘process line’ to improve beef’s convenience rating in the eyes of the consumer and so make it more price competitive, price attractive.
The Bovine carcase comprises three tissues – Bone, Muscle, Fat. They grow and develop in that order.
Dr Rex Butterfield described the preferred carcase as having MAXIMUM MUSCLE; OPTIMUM FAT; MINIMUM BONE. The ‘normal’ 250-300kg carcase comprises in the order of 60% muscle, 25% fat and 15% bone. The two tissues that vary the most are muscle and fatness, as the animal’s slaughter age increases then the percentage FAT increases (and can do so significantly) relative to the muscle and bone. Bone varies the least, in fact bone variation by weight outside of a range of 13% – 17% are seldom seen.
Although visual selection for heavy bone has been and still is very high on the list of many a commercial cattleperson, it is not the preferred option when it comes to improving Saleable Retails Yield or
Maternal Bovine excellence. Heavy to extreme bone can reduce Saleable Yield by as much as 4% thereby reducing beef’s price competitive position re chicken and hog. Heavy bone does not correlate well with the maternally important traits of milking ability and calving ease.
Berg and Butterfield have shown how important it is, where we are to improve Saleable Yield, to get the muscle to bone ratio sorted. For more information on the muscle bone ratio refer to “New Concepts of Cattle Growth” by Berg & Butterfield.
It should be noted that it is not our intention that you should be selecting for slender, fragile bone, extremes are never the answer. Bones form the foundation for a strong framework / skeleton upon which to hang the muscle and ‘house’ the all-important internal organs.
Bone shape is an interesting concept, there is a school of thought that suggests flat bone is preferable to excessive and round bone in determining saleable yield and eating quality. Again, New Concepts of Cattle Growth demonstrates the advantages Dairy Cross animals have re muscle to bone and if slaughtered at young enough ages, Dairy and Dairy Cross beef exhibits both Tenderness and Marbling consider the Japanese ‘Middle Market’.
To reduce bone percentage by 2% say from 16% to 14% has a marked effect on carcase returns even based on wholesale value. Consider a standard 320kg carcase with a ‘boxed beef yield’ of 70% at $12.00 per kg. This translates to 224kg of boxed beef including trims with a wholesale value of $12.00/kg. Total value $2,688.00. Then by shifting the bone percentage from 16% to 14%, the kilos in the box goes from 224kg to 230kg, an additional 6kgs at $12.00/kg = $72.00.
Importantly there is still a huge void in the system re measuring the bone content, bone percentage of the carcase / live animal.
Stage 1. Calf: Bone to muscle both growing and developing. Milk a significant contributor to animals’ nutrition. Transition to Stage 2 normally at 4 – 5 months at 180kg.
Stage 2. Grower: Calf normally yet to be weaned. Muscle tissue growth accelerates, bone still growing and developing, all be it at a slower rate. Fattening will occur if nutrition is unlimiting and growth rates exceed 0.80kg/day. Under normal regimes expect weaning to occur at 240 – 300kg at 6 – 9 months. Transition to Stage 3 normally at 15 – 20 months at 420 – 470kg.
Stage 3. Finisher: Phase characterised by negligible bone growth, muscle growth slows, muscle cells still replacing themselves but muscle volume/total content slows. It’s the fattening phase animal has physiologically matured and bones start to calcify. This phenomenon is a vital tool in predicting the Growth Pathway of the animal. Should the growth path have been interrupted by ‘reduced nutrition’, then this calcification process will be activated earlier than if nutrition and growing conditions had remained even and adequate. The bones will start to calcify at lighter weights. Ossification is used by the MSA grading system to predict the physiological ‘Age’ of the meat and so the likely tenderness of that muscle produced by that carcase. An understanding of normal patterns of growth does enable the development of growth pathways guidelines that can assist optimise both saleable yield and eating quality.
Muscle is the ‘value tissue’ on the carcase, improving carcase musculature has long been the challenge of the industry hence the carcase competitions and carcase competition judging systems – ABBAM etc. heavily biased in their point distribution toward muscling.
Once again Butterfield’s research has been to the fore, he has shown by carrying out many muscle dissections that muscling/muscle distribution is proportional. That is, if a forequarter muscle is well developed (biceps femoris) the it follows that a muscle ‘along the top’ (longissimus dorsi) will be well developed and a muscle of the hindquarter (gluteus maximus) will be well developed.
Eye muscle area (EMA) as a result of this proportionality relationship identified by Butterfield has been used in the development of equations to suggest potential likely carcase yield. Unfortunately, single site measurement of muscling to predict saleable yield has been incomplete primarily because a muscle as long as the eye muscle does vary in cross sectional area front to back, it tapers down toward the ‘front end’ of the beast. Some eye muscles taper significantly more than others. So, while the mass of the eye muscle when compared to the forequarter and hindquarter muscle remains proportional the single point cross sectional areas can/will vary.
Enter Video Image Analysis and more recently double X-ray imaging, it is to be hoped the X-ray imaging technology will provide some worthwhile outcomes regarding the measurement of muscle content in the carcase that can then provide a means of value based payment.
Muscle is the second tissue to grow and develop which is why it’s so important to maintain cattle on an even and adequate plane of nutrition along the ‘Growth Pathway’. Importantly there is no place for Compensatory Gain where producers are targeting best saleable retail yield outcomes. If nutrition is limiting up to 450kg and daily gains drop below 0.75kg/day for a greater part of the phase (cow/calf – growing) then the calf will not be able to achieve its genetic potential to produce muscle. Remember the muscle tissue is going to comprise 56 – 60% of the carcase endpoint weight – target 60%.
From a saleable yield perspective improving muscle is hugely important, yet the muscularity needs to be kept in check re maternal traits expression. It’s like most things we need to work at, single trait improvement can/is dangerous if not moderated – The Biggest and the Most isn’t necessarily the Best.
Fat
Fat has traditionally been the ‘bogey’ for those concerned with improving saleable yield. Carcase fat content varies the most of the three tissues. Carcase fatness is a function of
- i) Age at slaughter
- ii) Weight at slaughter
iii) Plane of nutrition pre-slaughter
- iv) Breed/genetic make-up within breed, that is maturity pattern.
In addition, there are several fat depots in the carcase: –
- a) Internal fat (‘Channel’ fat) often referred to as kidney, heart and pelvic fat.
- b) Intermuscular fat, fat between the muscle
- c) Subcutaneous fat, fat immediately ‘under’ the hide
- d) Intramuscular fat – marbling commonly referred to as the taste
During the 19th and first half of the 20th century beef breeds and cattle within breeds were selected for their abilities to fatten and produce an excess of 30% fat by carcase weight. This was because Caloric requirements by a more ‘physical’ work force were high, fat had a much greater use as a ‘fuel’, as a cooking medium (today largely replaced by vegetable oils etc.). During this era fat was extremely important as it assisted with the prevention of ‘muscle tissue spoilage’ due to microbial activity. As a general rule microbes cannot live and reproduce in fat, salt and fat pre-refrigeration and vacuum packaging were the only means of preserving the muscle tissue (the meat we eat).
As a result of the advent of refrigeration vacuum packaging etc. and lifestyle there has needed to be a change in the emphasis re carcase fatness from one of the total amount to one of distribution. Evenness of fat distribution and inclusion of more emphasis on marbling for some markets have had to be the new issues for focus re fatness at the same time significantly reducing total fatness. Distribution has assumed a much greater role because as total fat percentage has dramatically been reduced an even and adequate ‘cover’ over the carcase has been essential to protect the carcase during refrigeration (particularly of the butt region) from freezer burn, cold shortening etc. Some fatness is also needed for cooking, as both a lubricant and for taste particularly of the butt end cuts where marbling is virtually non-existent.
The sub-cutaneous fat trimmed to about 3 – 5mm over the primals adds value to those primals, it’s not just the muscle that contributes to carcase value, adequate fat retails at the same value as the muscle.
The challenge with carcase fatness going forward is to ensure adequate subcutaneous cover over the primals produce the marbling levels required by the specific markets and to do this while maintaining the 60:25:15 objective that is, a carcase with 60% muscle, 25% fatness and 15% bone. These are rounded numbers but do provide worthwhile direction, remembering that ‘niche’ segments will/do require variations.
The growth path guideline outlined above is an important tool to assist produce cattle that will fit the saleable yield requirements of the market for fatness as well as optimising musculature. Most mid-maturity pattern cattle will not fatten significantly particularly at ages under 20 – 22 months, unless they are nutritionally driven to achieve growth rates of 0.8kg/day and more. Finishing regimes – feedlots, crop fattening etc. will be aiming at gains in excess of 2.0kg/day and 1.4kg/day respectively, cattle under these programs need to be marketed at a fatness prescribed specification otherwise saleable yield will be compromised.
It is important not to ‘over fatten’ cattle from a price competitive perspective because fat is an expensive tissue to add to the carcase, it is deposited as growth rate slows and requires 2¼ times as much energy to produce as a unit of muscle. It also costs to trim and the tissue fat has a reduced market value to say 60 plus years ago.
Eating Quality
When it’s all said, and done the only reason we produce beef is for people to Eat It!
Consumer taste test work carried out by MLA in the 1990’s re-inforce the fact that the three components of Liking for Beef are:
- Tenderness
- Flavour
- Juiciness
Tenderness
There have been many attempts at qualifying beef tenderness, perhaps the most relevant being “The resistance to the bite”. In other words, how much work/pain must the jaws perform/endure to “break up” the muscle bundles and fibres pre-swallowing. Warner Bratzler and Angstrom compression have been two ‘scientific’ developments made to attempt to qualify tenderness objectively, both being helpful in assisting direct attempts to qualify tenderness. Importantly though it is the consumer response to the trait that needs a more thorough understanding so as to re-instate beef in the ‘steaks’ with chook and hog.
Muscle biology is a complex science, more study needs to be carried out so that these complexities can be better understood particularly with respect how the muscle transforms to the beef we eat.
It’s possible to make some postulations that do appear to ‘work’ in relation to tenderness: –
ü Cattle with adequate (faster if you like) growth rates do produce muscles that are more likely to be tender that less adequate slower growth rates. Cattle slaughtered at younger ages at the same carcase weights produce muscles that are likely to be more tender. Note this relationship is quantified by the phenomenon ossification. Ossification or calcification, fusing of the bones of the ‘backbone’ has been shown to have a positive relationship with muscle tenderness. That is, the less the ‘fusing’ calcification of these bones the more tender the beef. This physiological maturity measure is a much better guide to muscles and their relative tenderness than is chronological age or in fact ‘teeth’. Cattle on higher planes of nutrition produce faster growth rates than those on lesser planes and so at the same age their body components ‘bone and muscle’ are younger (and so more tender with respect muscle), than cattle on lower planes of nutrition.
Again, this is why compensatory gain is not seen as a positive where the intention is to produce more tender, better yielding carcases and so capture back some of the lost ground in terms of eating quality and price competitiveness.
Muscle function impacts tenderness, for example the muscles of the neck due to the fact the neck is continually being raised and lowered (grazing, watering, support during walking etc.) are tougher than those muscles who’s only function is to support posture e.g. the eye muscle, tenderloin. Obviously the older the animal the more work these locomutation type muscles have had to perform and so the tougher the meat from these cuts becomes. Managing the growth curve/growth pathway is really important to ensure tenderness.
Flavour – Juiciness
Beef has traditionally been recognised as the ‘king of the proteins’ primarily because of its unique flavour and accompanying palatability trait – Juiciness. For evidence of this consider the fact that beef, in the steak cut/cook method of preparation, is in 60% of cases preferred without condiments – consumers prefer the unique beef flavour. Chicken, Pork etc. particularly since the ‘lean’ craze have to be ‘dressed up’ with sauces etc. to provide some flavour sensation- it’s not a chicken flavour it’s an apricot or peanut etc. flavour. Chicken merely a matrix.
The tissue that gives beef its unique flavour is the fat. Consumers shouldn’t be put off by adequate amounts of fat, say cuts trimmed to 3mm, best to cook the beef portion fat on then remove fat prior to eating. The consumer sensory research conducted during the initial stages of establishing the MSA grading system indicated the western pallet has a preference for beef with 3.5% – 9% fat in the serve.
Marbling or intramuscular fat is the preferred means of providing the beef fat for the discerning consumer. This is because the fat is evenly distributed through the muscle and so the consumer gets the flavour/juiciness sensation with each mouthful. Note that the range of marble scores satisfying the preferred 3.5 – 9% lipid intake preference is from 1+ to 5.
It should be noted that marbling is not only about the total amount of fat in the muscle but also the fineness and the even distribution. This ensures the consumer ingests some fat with each mouthful thereby ensuring the unique flavour and juiciness sensations are satisfied.
The juiciness story is not all that well understood except to say consumers can identify juicy from dry! Some fat may well be helping drive the juiciness sensation recorded by consumers because fat does stimulate the salivary gland to produce saliva during the act of chewing. Once again fats role is important in driving the sensory appreciation of beef by the consumer.
IMF% has been used to represent marbling by genetic evaluation systems. This is very misleading as IMF%, is simply the total amount of fat (intramuscular fat) it doesn’t take into account fleck size and fleck distribution and so the availability of some fat in each mouthful.
Intramuscular fat deposition is the last of the fats to be laid down, animal maturity is necessary if reasonable marble scores are to be achieved, so too even and adequate growth rate. Maintaining growth rates outlined in the Growth Pathway diagram help ensure potential marble score can be achieved.
There is no doubting the importance of fat in the equation of providing the non-failing beef eating experience. Fatness levels though need to be moderated so as to ensure optimum saleable yield and so achieve the all important price competitive status.
The challenge for beef now (not in another 10 to 20 years when consumption figures have further declined) is to address the two significant factors discussed here – Eating Quality and Saleable Yield, plus Feed Conversion in such a way as to ensure the nonfailing beef eating experience priced competitively. Research needs to focus on the complex biology so that the genetic component of these three factors can be accurately determined and breeders can include these traits in their programs.
If nothing else remember, there is no other reason to produce beef other than to satisfy the beef consumers expectation for the Non-Failing Beef Eating Experience, Price Competitively.