Selective breeding for hide quality

The hide is seen as an important product of the cattle industry, in its own right, along with the other products from cattle carcases: meat, pharmaceuticals, collagen, pet-foods etc. This is seen as a distinct approach compared with treating the hide as simply a 'meatwrapper' - a byproduct of the meat industry. The meat industry cattle business has been used to seeing its products (meat and hides) sold by selling the hide on the basis of quantity rather than quality, the more pounds (lb) they can sell the better. It is purely a commodity product, without a brand identity (although there are very promising hide identification and quality improvement schemes being developed in Australia, Sweden and the Netherlands). However, as the consumer increasingly wants safe and sterile meat, the idea of a vertically integrated meat and hide production facility has become more of a reality. In conjunction with the Meat Science Group at Colorado State University Rapid Multiple Ovulation and Embryo Transplant (MOET) and In-vitro Fertilisation (IVF) techniques have been developed for cattle to be selectively bred with the objectives of achieving the correct characteristics both for meat and for the hide. The requirements are: * better husbandry making use of the latest in veterinary care, minimizing medications applied by hypodermic injections * tagging of the animal throughout its lifecycle, and following through with individual identification of each hide * logging of health and weight gain * the appropriate use of ultrasound. This is used to check the fat content of the animal between the 13-15th vertebrae The quality of the fat distributed through the muscle (marbling), which affects the taste and tenderness of the meat, can be measured by ultrasound and the data stored in each animal's heath record. The goal is consistency. Animals are not harvested before a proper fat content and distribution, when specified limits have been reached. This has consequences for the quality of the hide, and the consistency of tannery processes. Conventionally, animals are slaughtered when they reach a certain size or age. In FBO's project animals with excess fat will be returned to the ranch to slim down! Typically animals are slaughtered with bodyweights that range well below 1000lb, all the way up to 1,600lb. At FBO, the range of acceptable weight will be +- 10% of the specified target weight. For the tanner, this also means that FBO's hides will have a much more standard size. For the tanner, since animals have received increased care on the ranch, and are brought to standard body weight, and fat content before slaughter, there are the following advantages: * there is greater consistency of area, and of fat content, from hide to hide * individual identification of the hide permits tracing the characteristics of resulting leather beyond the wet-blue tannery, via feedlot and ranch right back to the original cross-breeding of the animal. * this allows desirable quality traits to be enhanced through better cross-breeding, while selective breeding also allows undesirable traits to be eliminated. * the hide traits monitored include: area - to achieve a consistent and maximized area and regular shape (the 'square cow') growth-marks, wrinkles and other skin defects - to minimize characteristics undesirable or degrading leather quality grain thickness and grain pattern - to develop consistent grain abrasion resistance and appearance corium fibre-weave - to avoid 'vertical fibre' defect which drastically degrades tearing resistance hide thickness - to develop animals with greater consistency of hide thickness within the area of the hide, from butt to belly, and from hide to hide. Within five years, Future Beef are claiming that 70% of the hides produced will be of A or B quality grade, ie suitable for full-grain or aniline production. This compares with the current <10%. Feedback from the tanner is expected to confirm that overall hide size and weight will be more uniform, without side brands, and there will be a reduction in total brands overall. This will be achieved via a cash incentive/disincentive programme (ie paying a premium for hides without or few brands, or brands carefully positioned in low value areas of the hide). The incentive will be withheld for hides with brands in the economically important positions in the side or butt. The selective breeding by specialists in genetics will breed out the negative traits, and reinforce positive attributes: 'We're not talking about cloning or genetic engineering here', according to J Crowther. 'This is traditional cross-breeding, accelerated using modern techniques of IVF and MOET.' The advantage of MOET/IVF is that it uses modern animal husbandry techniques to promote the rapid acquisition of desirable traits, and at the same time eliminate traits that are not wanted - whether in the meat, or in the hide. This is a quick scheme that can produce selectively bred animals. With MOET, ova can be harvested from heifers as young as 13-14 months. This is achieved by carrying out the process on 'elite' cows with up to ten ova being harvested from a heifer on each occasion. These are then 'in vitro' fertilized, much the same as human 'test-tube babies' are created, fertilised with sperm of specially selected bulls. The resulting embryos are then implanted in surrogate breeding-cows/heifers, which do not have special pedigree - but which are able to bear healthy calves. The animal's diet is enriched with various Vitamins: C to improve the hide and meat quality. A study of the addition of vitamins A with vitamin C is underway, to investigate whether healing of open hide damage takes place more quickly. This has been shown and is expected to improve the hide quality. Again there is an incentive/disincentive scheme in place to ensure that ranchers and feedlot managers adhere to the prescribed system of caring for the animals. Once the animal has reached the required maturity, it enters the slaughter chain and is brain dead before the hide is sprayed with a reducing product in a process similar to that of the Darmstadt process to remove the hair. There is less than one hour between slaughter and going into the drum. Splitting is done in the raw and the speed of process means that there is no salt required in curing. Each animal has a 20-digit code, marked on a remote-readable ear-tag. This allows FBO to keep a record of the individual animal's entire life-span, collecting such data as rate of body weight gain, health history, medications, fat-content etc. On entering the meat-plant, each hide receives a nine-digit number which is correlated in the data-base with the carcase's electronic ear-tag. Each hide is stamped with its distinct ID number which is transferred with the hide. In this way every piece of leather can be traced back to the original animal and the farm, and breeding dam and sire. In order to minimise the stress to the animals, animal behaviourists have been included in the team in order to devise the most tranquil method of slaughter possible and to calm the animals after transport to the plant. They remain in 'calming pens' for 6 to 8 hours before being harvested. It has been recognised that a terrified animal does not provide such good meat at a calm one. This ensures that the meat is not subject to adrenaline hormones, which has been shown to produce tough meat, and that the animal's blood-pressure does not result in engorged veins which could later degrade leather quality. Future Beef are planning to build up to a slaughter rate of 1,000 day within the three-month period to November 2001. The ultimate aim for the project is 2.5 million cattle/year within six years. The kill harvesting starts in August. Various key ranchers are shareholders in the company. However, through FBO's network of agreements with all the ranchers, feedlot owners and others involved within the FBO system, and by using incentives paid for meeting the quality goals of FBO, an expectation of rapid quality improvement in animal health, quality of meat and the attributes of the hides is fully justifiable. The best characteristics are being achieved by crossbreeding to target the characteristics required. The aim is to produce an stocky animal which will give the most red meat per kilo carcase-weight. There will be no specific breed although Herefords, which seem to have a preponderence of VFD, are not being used.