Cattle production

This article covers beef production. For cow's milk, see milk production .

The cattle production includes the systems of production that of cattle. The most important products are milk and beef , the most important livestock is domestic cattle .

Products

Beef production worldwide, top positions and German-speaking countries (2012)
rank	country	production	proportion of
1	United States	11,849 kt	19%
2	Brazil	9,307 kt	15%
3	People's Republic of China	6,266 kt	10%
4th	Argentina	2,500 kt	4%
5	Australia	2,125 kt	3%
6th	Mexico	1,821 kt	3%
7th	Russia	1,642 ct	3%
8th	France	1,492 ct	2%
9	Canada	1,205 kt	2%
10	Germany	1,146 kt	2%
43	Austria	222 kt	0%
56	Switzerland	144 kt	0%

Cow milk production worldwide, top positions and German-speaking countries (2012)
rank	country	production	proportion of
1	United States	90,865 kt	15%
2	India	54,000 kt	9%
3	People's Republic of China	37,768 kt	6%
4th	Brazil	32,304 kt	5%
5	Russia	31,576 kt	5%
6th	Germany	30,507 kt	5%
7th	France	23,983 kt	4%
8th	New Zealand	20,053 kt	3%
9	Turkey	15,978 kt	3%
10	United Kingdom	13,884 kt	2%
32	Switzerland	4,101 kt	1 %
36	Austria	3,382 ct	1 %

beef

In 2012 around 63.3 million tons of beef were produced. The largest beef producers are the USA, Brazil and China.

milk

→ Main article : Milk production

In 2007, 625.8 million tons of cow's milk were produced. The largest producing countries are the USA, India and China.

Leather and hides

→ Main article : “Leather from cattle” in the article Leather

and

→ Main article : Beef skin

Races

The main dairy breeds include Ayrshire , Brown Swiss , Guernsey , Holstein-Friesian , Jersey, and Milking Shorthorn . In cattle fattening, domestic cattle can be divided into two types. Bos indicus or Zebu cattle come from South Asia and are adapted to tropical and subtropical climates. Brahman and Brangus are important representatives . Bos taurus are European domestic cattle, which include Charolais , Gelbvieh , Fleckvieh , Chianina , Limousin and Aberdeen Angus .

attitude

Beef production in Brazil

In the meat production of cattle, a distinction is essentially made between calf fattening (see also veal ), heifers and young cow fattening, ox fattening and young bull fattening. Young bull fattening is the most important production method in Germany. Young bulls are usually fattened for 18 to 24 months. After birth, they stay with the mother for a short time, are then separated from her and then raised with whole milk or milk replacer. The milk replacers commonly used today consist of milk powder and other additives, such as vitamins and enzymes, and serve to provide the animals with more needs-based care due to the increased performance level due to breeding. They are also fed roughage ( hay or grass silage ) as soon as possible to encourage the development of the rumen . After about 12 weeks, they are weaned, i.e. no longer fed with milk. The preventive use of antibiotics occurs primarily in the fattening calf trade, as the grouping of calves from different farms confronts the animals with new germs and these become more susceptible to infections. Young animal mortality is around 6 percent. From 2021, the prophylactic use of antibiotics in livestock husbandry will only be permitted for individual animals or a limited number of animals, and then only if there is a high risk of infection and the consequences of infection would be severe. Even with acute illnesses, only the affected animals may be treated; group treatment may only take place if there is a high risk of infection and there are no alternatives. The treating veterinarians must justify the prescription of antibiotics and their use must remain limited in time.

In addition, imported meat products must also comply with these new EU standards.

Fattening in 18 months: This is the usual fattening time. Due to the weather in Germany, the fattening is usually optimized for the stall space, because the stall is the most expensive means of production. Therefore the shortest possible fattening period should be aimed for. As a rule, the animals remain in the barn throughout the entire fattening period and are fed with a ration that enables optimal growth without the animals becoming excessively fat. Usually, silage made from maize is used together with concentrate feed, especially in the last third of the fattening period .

Fattening in 24 months: farms on grassland sites, d. H. Farms on locations with a high proportion of grassland or sown grassland fatten their animals in 24 months. Here the animals have pasture during the summer . The fattening period is longer because the daily increase in grazing is below the maximum. However, cattle show compensatory growth. Therefore, after grazing, they are housed in their 2nd year of life and are fed with very energy-rich feed in this phase of the final fattening.

According to a study by the Research Institute for the Biology of Farm Animals in Dummerstorf, grazing improves the nutritional and physiological value of meat considerably compared to livestock farming. It was found that the unsaturated fatty acid content can be significantly increased by the type of feeding. Bulls that were fed on pasture for one summer and on grass silage and flaxseed in winter had twice as many omega-3 fatty acids in muscle fat as bulls fed on grain concentrate. The heifers or young cow fattening and the ox fattening uses similar methods as the young bull fattening in 24 months.

The automatic feeding of cattle makes work easier, saves time and brings flexibility.

The space requirement for the animals in intensive animal husbandry should be minimized as much as possible, but the Animal Welfare and Farm Animal Husbandry Ordinance sometimes defines limit values. Calves over eight weeks old may only be kept in groups of up to three animals per pen with a minimum floor area of ​​6 square meters so that they can turn around without hindrance.

With pastoral extensive husbandry on natural pastures ( ranching , mobile animal husbandry ), few animals are kept on very large areas.

Environmental impact

According to the FAO (2006), beef production causes more environmental damage than other livestock systems .

In mixed systems (animal and crop production on the same farm), cattle production is usually well integrated and can have positive environmental effects. In many developing countries, cattle are used as draft animals , replacing fossil fuels . Cattle also use plant residues that are otherwise often burned. However, productivity in extensive systems in developing countries is often very low. A large part of the feed is used for the basal metabolic rate of the animals, which leads to inefficiencies and high environmental pollution per unit of yield.

The greatest environmental damage is caused by extremely extensive and extremely intensive systems . Extensive cattle production systems degrade grassland areas , contribute to deforestation and thus greenhouse gas emissions , reduce biodiversity and have negative effects on water flows and quality . Intensive cattle production systems pollute the environment through high nutrient input .

The conversion of feed into beef is significantly less efficient than with pork or poultry meat. Therefore, cattle production has a higher consumption of resources per unit of yield than pig or poultry production . Over the entire life cycle, however, cattle need less concentrated feed per kilogram of meat than the other farm animals due to the high proportion of roughage.

The water consumption in the production of one kilogram of beef is around 15,500 liters (for comparison: pork 5,000, wheat 1,300, coffee 20,500).

Beef production causes significantly higher greenhouse gas emissions than other meat production systems. For production in the context of intensive animal husbandry (US feedlot system), a value of 14.8 kg CO ₂ equivalent per kg of beef was determined. Pork, on the other hand, can be produced with 3.8 kg CO ₂ equivalent per kg meat and poultry meat with 1.1 kg CO ₂ equivalent per kg meat. Particularly when roughage is digested , a particularly large amount of methane is formed ( around four times as much compared to concentrated feed with little crude fiber ). In addition, there is the emission of the highly effective greenhouse gas nitrous oxide ("laughing gas") from the intensively used soils for cultivating forage crops.

The overall climate impact of cattle farming is the subject of a scientific dispute. Agricultural experts point out that cattle farming in pasture systems is also possible in a much more climate-friendly way. The veterinarian and World Agriculture Council lead author Anita Idel is of the opinion that roughage eaters, when they feed on grassland, are "climate protectors". Research at University Park in Pennsylvania in 2011 showed that the emissions of methane, nitrogen oxides and carbon dioxide in year-round grazing are eight percent lower than in intensive barns.

In 2018, two researchers from the University of Oxford and Agroscope showed in a study that beef which is specially bred for meat production and which also comes from extensive free-range husbandry does the worst; On the other hand, beef from (disused) dairy cows is best.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations : Statistical Database FAOSTAT, Agricultural Production Indices - Livestock Primary
2. ↑ Major Dairy Cow Breeds. Raw milk facts.
3. ↑ Breeds of Beef Cattle. Animal Science. Texas A&M University. ( Memento of the original from June 20, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ Barbara Reye: Fresh air, fewer antibiotics. In: bazonline.ch . April 12, 2019, accessed April 13, 2019 . 
5. ↑ EU passes new law on antibiotics • Albert Schweitzer Foundation. In: Albert Schweitzer Foundation for our environment. November 9, 2018, accessed on November 22, 2019 (German). 
6. ^ Franz Nydegger, Anne Grothmann: Automatic feeding of cattle - results of a survey on the state of the art.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
7. ↑ § 10 Space requirements for group housing
8. ↑ ^{a b c d} "Livestock's long shadow - Environmental issues and options"
9. ↑ AY Hoekstra, AK Chapagain: Water footprints of nations (PDF file; 445 kB)
10. ↑ Susan Subak: Global environmental costs of beef production In: Ecological Economics , 30 (1999); Pp. 79-91. doi : 10.1016 / S0921-8009 (98) 00100-1 . PDF full text .
11. ^ Nathan Fiala: Meeting the Demand: An Estimation of Potential Future Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Meat Production. Ecological Economics ( Memento of the original dated November 28, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , 2008, 67 (3), 412-419. (PDF file; 444 kB) 
12. ↑ Harper, LA et al .: Direct measurements of methane emissions from grazing and feedlot cattle . In: J Anim Sci . 77, No. 6, 1999, pp. 1392-1401. PMID 10375217 .
13. ↑ Katrin Blawat: Dispute about the cow as a " climate killer ". Science disagrees as to whether cattle contribute significantly to climate change or, on the contrary, even help preserve nature. In: Tages-Anzeiger. June 22, 2011, accessed May 3, 2016 . 
14. ↑ Cows are not climate killers . ORF . May 11, 2011. Retrieved September 26, 2013.
15. ↑ Anita Idel: Why the cow is a climate saver ( Memento from August 15, 2016 in the Internet Archive ). Topic page of the Carinthian Chamber of Agriculture
16. ↑ AIZ: US study: Extensive grazing protects the climate , agrarheute from May 10, 2011, accessed on December 5, 2014
17. ↑ J. Poore, T. Nemecek: Reducing food's environmental impacts through producers and consumers. In: Science. 360, 2018, p. 987, doi : 10.1126 / science.aaq0216 .
18. ↑ Stephanie Lahrtz: Identifying foods that are particularly harmful to the environment In: nzz.ch, June 1, 2018, accessed on September 9, 2018.

Web links

• Keeping cattle - Information from the Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office
• Proplanta: Methane emissions in cattle farming from October 23, 2016