During the 1960's beef cattle numbers in Australia increased by 54 percent from 11.6 million to 17.9 million (Coutts and Fernon 1971). The major expansion occurred in the high rainfall areas of Southern Australia, but substantial increases occurred in all beef cattle areas. Since 1970 more than 50% of Australia's beef and veal production was exported (Bureau of Agricultural Economics 1973), and...

The reaction of cattle farmers to CAP reforms under price risk depends on the farmers' technical flexibility and on the influence of direct subsidies on income stabilisation. The bovine sector subsidies, according to their rate of decoupling from product, can stabilise the income and modify the farmers' attitude towards market risk. A portfolio mutliperiod model represents a typical cattle farm...

Non-invasive in vivo marbling quantification helps owners to choose the optimum nutritional management for growing cattle and buyers to more precisely evaluate grown cattle at auctions. When using time-domain proton nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) relaxometry, it is possible to quantify muscle and fat separately by taking advantage of the difference in the spin-spin relaxation time (T2) betwee...

Background: Bovine cysticercosis is one of the most important parasitic diseases caused by the metacestode stage of the human tapeworm Taenia saginata. The public health and economic consequences of this parasite may be considerable due to downgrading and the condemnation of carcasses. Therefore, this survey was designed to estimate the prevalence, economic losses and food safety importance of ...

Myopalladin (MYPN) is a multifunctional protein that maintains sarcomeric integrity and regulates Z-line structure. It is an important candidate gene for meat quality selection through marker-assisted selection. Using PCR-RFLP technology, we discovered a single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) (A1795G in exon 9) of the MYPN gene. Allele frequencies of this SNP were investigated and evaluated by th...

A study was conducted in order to evaluate the contamination by Brucella spp. of meat from animals slaughtered because they had resulted positive for brucellosis at some time during their life. After slaughter and before delivery to market outlets, swab samples were taken from 307 carcasses of infected animals: 40 cattle, 60 sheep and 207 goats. The swabs were subsequently analysed by means of ...

The myostatin protein is a regulator factor in the normal muscle that determines the maximum amount of muscle mass that is typical of that species. If the myostatin gene is mutant, the negative regulating function of the gene does not work. This leads to an increased muscle growth resulting in muscle hypertrophy and hyperplasia. That phenomenon occurs in beef cattle production as well, e.g. in ...

Acyl-coenzyme A oxidase 1 (ACOX1) is the first enzyme in peroxisomal fatty acid β-oxidation; it is rate-limiting and plays a key role in fatty acid metabolism and fat deposition. ACOX1 is an important candidate gene for meat quality selection through marker-assisted selection. Genomic structural analysis showed that bovine ACOX1 shares 86% identity with human ACOX1. Using PCR-SSCP technolo...

This review highlights some recent developments in our understanding of stress and physical injuries that occur before and during transport to slaughter, during handling at livestock markets, and at the time animals are put-up for slaughter within abattoirs. Stress in pigs during transfer to the stunning point within the abattoir has important effects on meat quality, and there is growing evide...

A new methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) clone related to pig and cattle farming was detected in the Netherlands. We investigated the extent of S. aureus presence in meat and found 36 S. aureus strains in 79 samples. Two strains were MRSA; 1 was multilocus sequence type 398, the clone related to farming.