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1997



				Cultural Perspective of Beef Consumption

				by Paul Herbig 

Evolving to Salad Bar Beef

Introduction
     Cattle have played several important roles throughout man's history.  Rock drawings show images of man worshipping cattle, using cattle for hard labor, and even eating cattle.  These images depict the long lasting relationship that bulls and cows have had with man.  Over thousands of years, cattle have evolved to play a variety of roles within a variety of cultures.  In countries like Africa and India, cattle still play a vital role in traditional ceremonies of worship and labor.  In most other countries, cattle are bred for beef and/or milk.  Europe, Australia, and Africa offer a diversity of beef production systems that range from the traditional to modern.  Land characteristics, location, price, social and traditional conditions, government regulation, and demand for beef all influence the production systems used within each country. In the U.S., cattle are primarily bred as a food supplement - beef.  With the increase awareness of heart disease and its relation to high fat in diets, more American consumers are demanding leaner meat.  Some consumers are even substituting other food sources with low fat and low cholesterol in place of beef.  
     In 1986, Lawry's Restaurants, a California based restaurant chain, added the California-Lean Cut to its prime-rib menu.  This 6-oz portion of prime rib won 25% of sales against three larger cuts.  In 1991, sales increased to 35% and the California-Lean is now offered in Lawry's restaurants in Illinois.  Jo Ann Thornbury, owner of The Autumn Winds restaurants located throughout the midwest, sells more 4-oz Twin Medallions and 7-oz Hannigan's steaks than her 12-oz T-bone steak (Anderson, 1991).  Cattle breeders need to redesign their production techniques or adapt appropriate techniques found in other parts of the world in order to adjust to this change in demand.  By studying production methods of other countries, U.S. breeders may find a production system that may produce a carcass that meets the lean meat requirements of American consumers.  If no production systems exist, then U.S. breeders may find themselves in the forefront for producing leaner - salad bar - beef.
     The objective is three fold, (1) to review the historical importance and use of cattle in different cultures, (2) to review the production systems used in these various cultures, and (3) to determine if U.S. breeders can continue to operate the current production systems, adopt a foreign production system(s), or  develop new production systems in order to meet the demand for leaner meat to save their industry.
Historical Importance and Use of Cattle in Various Cultures
     All cattle today are descendants from two wild ancestors, the giant Aurocha of western Asia, North Africa, and Europe, and the smaller highland shorthorns of England.  The Aurocha measured up to seven feet at the shoulders, which could be one of the reasons why this massive creature was viewed as a god (Conrad, 1973).  Cattle were first worshipped as gods and then used by man as sacrificial animals in religious ceremonies.  The Egyptians were the first to domesticate cattle around 5000 B.C.  They worshipped cattle as gods.  All of the ancient cultures that worshipped cattle, viewed the bull as superior to the cow.  The bull represented masculinity, ferocious power, domination, and protection.  The bull was also viewed as fearless, passionate, and aggressive.  The cow was usually represented as the giver of life, peaceful, self-contained, as purity and all that is good in the world (Tuan, 1984).  
     Even though bulls and cows were worshipped as gods, people still found practical uses of their bones such as fishing hooks, harpoons, and spears.  Their hides were tanned and used as tents, boats, and clothing (Barloy, 1974).  
     Cattle were also the first animal to be used as a beast of burden.  They were attached to sleighs and wagons.  Priests used cattle to plow fields believing that the cattle had a god-like fertilizing power to enrich the crop.  Even when a bull or cow's usefulness was deteriorating, it still provided man with one more resource - meat.  Because cattle have provided so many different resources for man, they have long been the more useful of all the animals (Barloy, 1974).

  Africa
      Egypt
     Cattle were first worshipped as gods several thousand years before the birth of Jesus Christ, around 5000 B.C., by the Egyptian king Narmer-Menes.  Although he is well known for his military accomplishments, he is also credited for creating the first universal religion.  Narmer-Menes believed a bull god, named Apis, was conceived by a special cow who had been impregnated by a ray of moonlight.  The bull god represented strength and virility and passion for war.  Apis shared the heavens with Hathor, the cow goddess.  It was believed that Hathor gave birth to the sun and represents fertility and nurture.  On holy days, a bull was adorned with religious garments and paraded before the people.  Apis' birthday was preceded with a week of joyous feasting.  In ancient times, a bull would be chosen to represent Apis.  The bull's every movement and demeanor was interpreted as a sign from Apis himself.  People would spend the night in a temple close to the Apis bull and their dreams would be interpreted through the bull's actions.  Before the Apis bull could die peacefully, it was slaughtered and eaten.  The remains were mummified and buried in a special stone tomb weighing over fifty tons.  For thousands of years to come, Egyptian kings would be referred to as mighty bulls (Isaac, 1962).

       Hebrews
     Hebrews worship the bull of Jacob.  They felt that the bull god had delivered them from Pharaoh and would lead them to the promised land.  In the old testament, the word bull is believed to be replaced by the words "Mighty One."  After the Hebrews became agriculturalists, the bull gods were replaced with more human-like images.  Many historians picture Moses with horns to depict the incarnation of the bull god (Isaac, 1962).

     Southern Africa
     From Egypt, cattle cults spread south along the Nile throughout Africa.  Even today, the cow still maintains its spiritual meanings and traditions.  In the Masai tribe of Kenya, when boys are circumcised, they show their courage and manhood by holding onto the horns of a live bull.  Among the Dinka tribe of South Africa, during wedding ceremonies, the bridegroom smears his wife's breast and shoulders with the stomach contents of a bull he just killed to insure her fertility.  After a child is born, the head, neck, and chest are covered with the blood of a bull the family just killed and ate.  The Zulus wash their newborns with cow dung and make a necklace for the newborn from the hair of the cow's tail.  In the Banyankole tribe, also of South Africa, when a king dies, he is bathed in cow's milk and buried in the hide of the freshly killed cow (Conrad, 1973).

     Palestine
     The cattle cults spread northward through the Mediterranean Sea into present day Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel.  In old Palestine, they worshipped a bull god known as Baal, which means the bellowing one or roaring one.  He is the god of storm and fertility (Lincoln, 1981).

  Europe
   Greece
     The seafaring Phoenicians spread the cattle cults into Greece, Italy, and Spain.  However, the bull god Baal begins to take on other names and a more human like appearance.  The Greeks worshipped the bull god Dionysus, the god of life and fertility.  Worshippers would adore this bull by tearing a live bull apart, limb by limb with their bare hands.  Wearing the horns of the bull, one celebrant would dance faster and faster, whipping himself into a frenzy.  They would then eat the bull, hot and raw, until the first glimpse of sunrise.  They believed by eating the bull they would become more like the gods.  The Greeks worshipped the bull as an embodiment of god (Lincoln, 1981).

     Italy
     The Italians take their name from the word "Italia" meaning land of cattle.  Italians would worship the bull god Mars, god of battle.  When Rome threatened to invade italy, the Italian soldiers wore horns on their helmets into battle.  Archaeologists have discovered an italian coin depicting the bull god Mars goring and killing the she-wolf of Rome (Lincoln, 1981).

     Spain
     Early Spaniards made blood sacrifices from cattle to the gods.  The Spanish transferred the image of the bull sacrifices for a god to the symbol of nature.  Through the machismo of the matador, man could conquer the forces of nature (Lincoln, 1981).

     Rome
     By the middle of the first century B.C., the cattle cults found their way into Rome.  By the end of the second century, Mithraism, a worship of the god Mithra - god of light, was the official religion of Rome.  Mithra ruled side by side with the Aryan bull god of widespread pastures.  When a young couple would exchange their wedding vows, the bride would say, "Where thou art the bull I am the cow."  As Mithraic myth would have it, Mithra killed the bull god and secured a man-like image of god (Conrad, 1973).

       

Christianity
     With the death of Jesus Christ, Christianity began to compete with the Mithraic religion, making them powerful competitors.  Both religions believed in good and evil, heaven and hell, and everlasting salvation for those who were baptized in the faith.  Christian clerics began to depict the bull as evil in order to gain more following.  The Christian religion even took the Mithraic holy day, December 25 - the birth of sun, and used it as the birth of Jesus Christ.  The bull became the devil itself.  Christianity was the first to depict the bull as evil.  Christian clerics were trying to separate their new religion from all other religions (Conrad, 1973).

  Asia
      India
     Around 1750 B.C., the Aryan nomads invaded India, bringing with them their bull god Indra, god of thunderstorms.  The Aryan people were beef eaters.  The Aryan overlords and the Hindu Brahman loved to eat beef.  However, after 700 years of grazing cattle in India, the grasslands started to disappear.  The people began to farm the land.  But, in order to farm, they needed to save their cattle to plow the fields.  They also needed to save some cows to breed replacements and provide milk.  The Indian people were very poor and the privilege of eating beef became a way of life only for the Brahman and overlords.  The poor, torn between survival and famine, began to resent the privileged beef eaters (Harris, 1987). 

       Buddhists
     The peasants turned to a new religion, Buddhism.  The Buddhists denounced the killing of any living thing, which put them directly at odds with the Hindu Brahman rulers.  This was an easier way of life for the peasants to follow, because they could not afford to eat their own cattle (Harris, 1987).

       Hindu
     The Buddhists struggled with the Hindus for nine centuries.  The Hindus eventually prevailed, but not before adopting the Buddhists' belief that condemned the killing of any animal.  However, the Hindus took the protection of the cow one step further and declared it a sacred animal of worship.  Milk was substituted for meat in Hindu rituals.  The Hindus believe that everything that comes from the cow is sacred, because the cow is the mother of life (Harris, 1974).
     To this day, the Indian government maintains old-age houses for cows that are too ill to roam the streets.  The animals are housed at the government's expense.  The penalty for killing a cow in India is life imprisonment.  If the cow is killed by accident, the person who killed the cow has to shave his/her head and is confined for one month to a cow pasture where he/she is covered with the skin of the cow he/she killed Barloy, 1974).
     The cow is much more than an object of worship in India.  It provides most of India's dairy requirements.  Children follow the family cow and collect the valuable excrement.  The excrement is used as fertilizer and provides heat for cooking.  Cow dung is even mixed with water and used to build homes.  Cattle provide power for more than 60 million small farms.  The cows leather is used to maintain the largest leather industry in the world.  The carcass is sold to the Muslims, Christians, and others who eat meat (Harris, 1974).
     Today, mainly due to the wide acceptance of Christianity, the bull and the cow play a very minimal role in most societies.  Gone are the days of the bull gods of our ancestors.  However, some religions still portray cattle as sacred animals.   

Contemporary Types of Beef Production Systems
     The world's beef business is a mixture of several different production systems ranging from an African herdsman using a spear to protect his cattle to a European using an intensive grain-finishing system.  Several factors influence beef production systems from tradition, to profits, to government regulation on trade.

  Africa
     There are two distinctive beef production systems found in Africa, (1) the modern system where cattle and land are usually owned by a person of European ancestry , and (2) the traditional system, which is based on pastoral grazing.  In the modern system, cattle are fattened on homegrown grains and forage residue in combination with a cow-calf operation.  In the traditional system, individuals or groups of people own the cattle and graze them on a common pasture.  This is the system mainly used in countries where cattle raising is still based on a tribal or indigenous social structure that is operating near the subsistence level and where there is no well developed private property system.  Communal grazing is widespread in Africa and is based on raising as many animals that the land will allow and not on the bases of an efficient optimal number of cattle (Simpson & Farris, 1982).
     Since the cattle are herded communally, there are hardly any incentives for any herdsman to improve his management techniques or better his stock, because any number of bulls and cows can breed with each other.  It would also be very hard for a herdsman to keep his selected cattle apart from the other herds because of the intense social pressure that underlines the communal system.  Therefore, no practical production system exits.

     East Africa
     The land is very dry and is best suited for cattle grazing.  No systematic grazing management is practiced and diseases and parasites kill several cattle each year.  Some twenty diseases affect cattle in Ethiopia alone.  Pastoralist and small herdsmen still manage cattle with the traditional system (Simpson & Farris, 1982).

     Southern Africa
     In South Africa, both the modern system and the traditional system of production are in practice today.  Europeans in Zimbabwe have established breeds on well developed ranches.  About 80% of the cattle are owed by native African pastoralist.  Diseases transported by the Tsetse fly are major drawbacks, along with the cultural and political strife found in South Africa (Simpson & Farris, 1982).

     Other African Countries
     In most of the other countries found in Africa, the traditional pastoral cattle system still exists.  The extent to which cattle are kept in a nomadic, semi-nomadic, or settled manner varies among the countries, as well as within the countries.  It is fair to generalize that over most the continent the majority of cattle are managed under the traditional communal grazing system (Simpson & Farris, 1982).

     Breed
     All the breeds in Africa are descendants of the Zebu, the Longhorn, and/or the shorthorn breeds (Beef Cattle Resources, www).

  
Asia
     In most of the Asian countries, cattle are mainly used for transport and draft power.  There is a high proportion of camels and buffaloes to cattle reinforcing the fact that Asian's use of animals is labor intensive.  Cattle are used more for work than for beef production.  Beef is a byproduct of the draft animal industry.  Since the specialization is on draft animals, here to, no practical production system exists (Pimental & Hall, 1989).

     India
     Indians do not eat the meat of their sacred cows, however, cattle are hitched to plows, wagons, and threshing machines.  Cow's milk is drunk hot with sugar or stirred into thick cups of tea.  Dried dung is burnt as household fuel.  It is obvious that no productions systems exits in India (Harris, 1987).

     Breed
     Various draft and milk producing cattle are found in Asian countries, such as, the Thai, Sanho, Alambadi, and the South Chinese Zebu (Beef Cattle Resources, www).

  Europe
     The European cattle industry is based almost exclusively on dairy production.  The farms tend to be run by small family units.  Beef breeds make-up only 2-5% of all cattle.  France is Europe's largest beef producer.  Beef is mainly a by product of the dairy industry.  Since milk is the most important farm product of the European community, the dairy herds make a major contribution.  There is an excess supply of milk, thus, causing a high price for milk.  Government regulation tries to ease the problem, but with little results.  Europe's expertise on production focuses on dairy production and not on beef production (Simpson & Farris, 1982).
     Breed
     A great variety of breeds are found in Europe, the majority are milk producers, like, Fleckveih, Danish Breeds, Maine-Anjou, Angler, Polish Breeds, and Hungarian Spotted Jerseys (Beef Cattle Resources, www).

  Australia
     Australia is the leading exporter of beef.  Beef is a mixed system of farming and ranching.  This spreads the risks, maximizes the use of land, labor and capital, and results in a more stable cash flow.  The cattle industry is based on cattle that feed on pasture land year-round.  What is implied in Australian production systems, is to "fatten" cattle.  Since 60% of Australia's cattle are exported, breeders focus on fattening their cattle so the cattle will not lose to much weight during the long hauls to other countries.  These production techniques definitely do not lead to leaner beef (Simpson & Farris, 1982).  
     Breed
     Since the land in Australia is usually dry, Droughtmasters are the cattle of choice (Beef Cattle Resources, www).

  United States
     The beef system in the U.S. is almost completely different from all other systems in the world.  And, it is completely separate from the dairy industry.  The vast majority of cattle are fattened in confined feedlots instead of pastures, or crop residue.  There is also considerable specialization of production and marketing functions.  Several production techniques are used like, (1) importing cattle at low cost in order to fatten and sell at a higher price - profit driven, (2) select breeding and genetics, which in the past has focused primarily on developing a breed that will yield a high birth weight (fat) to increase profits, (3) feedlots and cattle feeding, which focuses on fattening cattle for resale, and (4) futures trading for potential profits.  Currently, the United States' production systems focus on fattening calves for resale to obtain maximum profits and not on breeding cattle to provide leaner beef (Simpson & Farris, 1982).
     Breed
     The U.S. is the melting pot for the beef cattle business.  Some of the more popular breeds and crossbreeds are the Texas Longhorn, Hereford, Senepol, Beefmaster, Brangus, Braford, Santa Gertrudis, and the Simbrah.  More and more exotic breeds are being imported into the U.S.  These breeds are being imported for their low-fat breeding traits (Beef Cattle Resources, www).

The Need For New Production Systems - Cattle Industry Threats
     Substitutes for Beef
     Beef consumption fell 14% between 1980-84 and 1990-94, while chicken consumption rose 37% and turkey rose 67%.  The buffalo population in the U.S. has grown from a mere 1,000 head to over 150,000 head.  Buffalo meat has more protein, fewer calories, less cholesterol, and less fat.  Emu farms and Ostrich farms have also increased in number (Hartmann, 1991).  However, with a cost of about $25,000 to $45,000 for a pair, few are sold for meat.  Deer farming can be as much as 3 times more profitable than raising cattle (Machan, 1989).  

     Special Interest Groups and World Hunger Organizations
     The increased awareness of world hunger has also attacked the cattle industry.  Currently, 70% to 75% of all the grain in the world market is used to feed cattle, not people.  More and more pressure from special interest groups and world hunger organizations are diverting grain that was intended for cattle to third world countries to feed starving people.  Special interest groups like Green Peace are attacking ranchers in tropical areas for converting rain forest land into grasslands for cattle grazing.  They also attack cattle for contributing to global warming.  As cattle digest their food, they produce large amounts of methane gas which contribute to the greenhouse affect (McDonald, 1994).  Most of these organizations are encouraging consumers to give up beef altogether, lean or not.  Now, even the vegetarian is a threat to the beef cattle industry.

Trends in U.S. Consumer Consumption of Beef
     Trends
     Many people believe that the U.S. consumer has given up on beef.  This is not true.  Americans still love beef, and they are still ordering it when they go out to eat.  They are just ordering smaller portions and trimming away the visible fat.  Beef is still the top seller in consumer food stores.  It is lower in cholesterol and fat than ever before.  In 1994, consumption of beef rose by 4% to 67 pounds per person, annually.  In 1995, consumption rose to 68 pounds per person.  Consumption is rising because prices are falling.  Beef prices are at an all time low and will persist until 1997.  Therefore, at least for the short-run, beef consumption is expected to continue to increase (Berss, 1995).
     Two Types of Beef Consumers
     There are two types of beef consumers, (1) a special occasion consumer and (2) a frequent diner.  For the special occasion consumer, old fashioned T-bones are the main menu at special gatherings.  The special occasion is usually a night out on the town celebrating a promotion, an anniversary, or even a birthday.  The frequent diner is looking for a reasonably priced, smaller portioned, healthier beef dish.  The frequent diner sees the restaurant as a home away from home kitchen and will special order a beef plate with the fat trimmed off (Anderson, 1991).

     New Production Methods and Marketing
     The beef industry is advertising lean meat and nutrition to aggressively market beef as a vital part of a balanced diet (Anderson).  U.S. breeders are developing (1) crossbreeding techniques which can produce calves with less fat and more beef, (2) management intensive grazing techniques to reduce costs (Gerrish, 1996), (3) advanced feeding practices (Jones, 1996), (4) consumer oriented marketing (Anderson, 1991), and (5) techniques to monitor market trends on diet and health concerns.

Conclusion
     Can U.S. breeders and ranchers continue their production systems and still satisfy the demand for leaner beef?  Or, should U.S. breeders adopt a foreign production system(s) and/or develop a new system(s)? With the increase demand for substitute products for beef, the falling prices in the world beef industry, and with the lack of better production alternatives, foreign or domestic, the U.S. breeders need to develop new techniques that produce leaner beef for the final consumer.
     Cattle have progressed with man since the begging of time.  They have fulfilled their roles as gods, beasts of burden, and as a life giving source of food.  Human gods have replaced most cattle for worship in most parts of the world.  There has been an increase in the use of stronger more versatile draft horses as beasts of burden.  And, now, the "fat cow" is on the verge of being replaced by the chicken, turkey, emu, ostrich and other nutritional, less fat supplements for beef.  After all this time, have cattle reached the end of the trail?  The answer is a flat, No!  Man will continue to influence the evolution of cattle even beyond the point of salad bar beef.







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