Beef

Beef

  • Submitted By: jackiezyseah
  • Date Submitted: 02/08/2014 3:45 PM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 2130
  • Page: 9
  • Views: 56

Meat-ing Higher Demands.
In the past century, the domestication of beef cattle has been vastly increasing and with that, the domestication has left a major negative side effect on the earth though it has a great positive effect from an economic standpoint. The growth of the beef industry mirrors the rise in global population, but increasing gross domestic product per capita in developing countries boosts the demand even higher. Beef cattle are cattle raised for meat production. Besides breeding beef cattle to meet the demand for beef production, cattle ranchers use selective breeding to attain specific traits in beef cattle, such as leaner meat and higher resistance to illness. Most beef cattle are mated naturally, whereby a bull is released into a cowherd approximately six weeks after the calving period. However, beef cattle can also be bred through artificial insemination. Owners can select the breeding time based on a number of factors, including reproductive performance and seasonal cattle pricing.
People have been eating the flesh of bovines since prehistoric times. Cattle were originally identified as three separate species: Bos taurus, the European or "taurine" cattle Bos indicus, the zebu; and the extinct Bos primigenius, the aurochs. The aurochs is ancestral to both zebu and taurine cattle. Recently, these three have increasingly been grouped as one species, with Bos primigenius taurus, Bos primigenius indicus and Bos primigenius primigenius as the subspecies. (“Cattle”) People domesticated cattle around 8000 BC to provide ready access to beef, milk, and leather. Most cattle originated in the Old World, with the exception of bison hybrids. Examples include the Wagyū from Japan which refers to several breeds of cattle, the most desired of which is genetically predisposed to intense marbling and to producing a high percentage of oleaginous unsaturated fat. The meat from such wagyu cattle is known for its quality, and demands a high price. In several...

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