Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
provide customers with some assurance that the animals
have been reared in a manner which involves animal
welfare and environmental issues and are fit to produce
wholesome, safe food products. This complements the
'farm-to-fork' approach to meat production with control
over all the nutritional, welfare, housing and other man-
agement factors, as well as ensuring the traceability of the
food product. Veterinarians have a pivotal role in this dis-
cipline, both on the farm and at the meat plant.
animals since they exist on less valuable land, need only
rough grazing, are more disease resistant and act as a
tourist attraction. Some problems, however, arise in con-
nection with feeding, protection from predators, slaugh-
ter and meat inspection.
Recent innovations have included the breeding of
wild boar in England and buffalo in Germany, France
and Poland. Wild boars introduced from Germany and
Denmark into England are used to produce purebreds as
well as crosses with established breeds of pigs. Differences
in quality and flavour are said to exist between the wild
variety and the various crosses. Litter sizes average six
piglets and only one litter is produced yearly. Slaughtered
at 12-14 months, wild boar has a live weight of about
59 kg and a dead weight of around 45 kg. The meat is very
lean with an acceptable flavour, but stress is sometimes
associated with abattoir slaughter, which may necessitate
on-farm handling. In Great Britain, the keeping of wild
boar is subject to the Dangerous Wild Animals Act.
Buffalo meat is said to be more tender, leaner and
gamier than beef, with lower levels of cholesterol.
Although expensive in France, it is cheaper than beef in
Canada. The name buffalo is often applied to the bison
(
Bison bison
) of North America, a different species of
the order Bovidae. There are several species; the Indian
buffalo (
Bubalus bubalis
), sometimes called the water
buffalo or arna, is the only one to be domesticated. It is
found in many parts of the Old World, with significant
numbers in Hungary, Italy and France.
The future for meat and meat products will depend
mainly on consumer demand and the prices at which
they can be profitably produced. As living standards rise,
so also does the consumption of meat. Factors such as
the cost of production, feed conversion efficiency, land
use and availability, consumer taste, price to consumers,
diet, attitudes of people to meat production methods,
use of protein from non-animal sources, etc. will all play
a part in determining future demands.
Procedures such as genetic engineering, embryo
transfer, sexed semen, cross-breeding and twinning will
continue to be utilised in attempts to produce more pro-
ductive livestock with improved milk and meat quality.
But if close attention is not paid to the vital importance
of disease resistance, we may well see the development
of stock susceptible to existing and novel conditions,
some of which may have serious public health implica-
tions. Consumer attitudes must always be borne in mind
by research workers and those engaged in the agricul-
ture and food industries, which will only prosper in a
climate of real consumer confidence in the quality and
safety of food.
In order to address this point, much food from animals
is produced under 'Farm Quality Assured Schemes. These
Dietary factors
Concern about the amount of fat, especially saturated
fat, in the diet, has been given prominence in the Western
world due to the adverse effects on human health.
According to the Living Costs and Food Survey (2011),
the amount of dietary energy derived from fat was 38.1%
for UK adults, with 14.2% of this energy being from satu-
rated fats. While these values are lower than 20-30 years
ago, the amount of fat in British diets is still higher than
current recommendations. The Scientific Advisory
Committee on Nutrition (SACN) states that the amount
of dietary energy derived from saturated fat should not
exceed 11%.
Steps have been taken to have legislation which require
total fat and saturated fatty acid content labelling on a
wide variety of foodstuffs. While much of the intake of
fat is derived from milk and dairy products, meat and
meat products, margarine, cooking fat and salad oils,
some comes from vegetable sources, where it is either
produced in a saturated form, for example, coconut oil,
or converted into such during manufacture. An increase
in dietary unsaturated fatty acids has been shown to
reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and
possibly some cancers, asthma and diabetes. It is possible
to modify animal diets to increase the amount of unsatu-
rated fatty acids in meat, milk and eggs and to decrease
the n-6:n-3 fatty acid ratio (Woods and Fearon, 2009).
The sources of fat in the average British diet are given
in Table 1.1.
If people respond to the SACN recommendations and
there are indications that this is already the case, there
will be major changes in food consumption which will
inevitably have an impact on production methods in
agriculture, especially in milk and livestock production,
despite the fact that not all is known about the aetiology
of the most common cause of death in most industrial-
ised countries. In the United Kingdom, in 2006, 30% of
all deaths in men and 22% of all deaths in women under
75 were ascribed to CVD. Factors such as heredity, blood
pressure, obesity, blood haemostasis, physical inactivity,
water hardness, smoking and alcohol consumption are
also involved in the causation of this serious condition.
