Cattle Industry

views updated May 17 2018

Cattle Industry

The cattle industry is one of the world’s most important agricultural enterprises. According to the United Nations, there were over 1.37 billion cattle worldwide in 2004. On a percentage basis, approximately 35 percent of these animals were in Asia, 23 percent in South America, 17 percent in Africa, 12 percent in North America, 10 percent in Europe, and 3 percent in Australia and Oceania. While this distribution is slanted toward Asia and South America, the livestock systems and uses of cattle vary substantially by location. For example, cattle often have dual purposes, particularly in Asia, where cattle are often used principally for traction and secondarily for meat and milk. In North and South America, however, cattle are used principally for meat and milk products.

According to William Lesser, a professor at Cornell University, cattle have been domesticated for several thousand years. He suggests that domesticated livestock provided early societies with four important functions: (1) a supply of high-quality protein, (2) the ability to store foodstuffs not directly consumable by humans, (3) hides for clothing and shoes, and (4) motive (traction) power (Lesser 1993, p. 31).

Lesser indicates that prior to the Industrial Revolution, cattle systems were relatively primitive. Cattle were kept without shelter, for example, and they had to forage for themselves. However, with the rise of the modern city during the Industrial Revolution, the cattle industry evolved from being a very local industry—where cattle generally provided traction, meat, leather, and livestock products for individual families—to an industry organized to produce cattle products that were transported from rural areas to urban centers.

Cattle primarily consume various types of forage, or fodder, and livestock systems have evolved in order for cattle and other livestock to harvest forages and convert the energy contained in forages into protein. This protein is then consumed by humans primarily in the form of milk and meat. Leather produced from cattle hides is also an important material used in making shoes, other clothing items, and clothing accessories.

In the United States, the evolution of the cattle industry may be best illustrated by the large cattle drives of the 1880s, where cattle were trailed (walked) from the south-central United States to rail centers such as Dodge City, Kansas. The cattle were then transported by rail to urban centers like Chicago, where they were slaughtered and processed. The beef was then shipped to urban consumers. The era of the cattle drive was the heyday of the American cowboy. Cowboys were necessary to control the cattle herds as they moved northward. This period of American history has been romanticized, as has the role of the cowboy as an independent free spirit who battles the elements to care for the cattle under his care. Today, of course, anyone who cares for cattle could be considered a cowboy, but the American cowboy remains an icon of the American West. The South American gaucho has also been romanticized in a similar fashion. Both the American cowboy and the gaucho are known for their distinctive clothing, equipment (such as a lariat), and their horsemanship.

Important technologies for shipping cattle carcasses and marketing cattle products were developed in the late 1800s by companies such as Cudahy, Wilson, and Swift. According to Lesser, this led to the rise of modern meatpacking, which was originally conceived on the same principles as the automobile industry. Henry Ford developed the idea of the modern assembly plant at the beginning of the twentieth century. Modern meatpacking plants have used the idea of product assembly in reverse, for they are essentially large disassembly plants. In meatpacking plants, cattle are slaughtered and their carcasses are disassembled and protected by plastic wrapping. The parts are then reassembled with like parts, referred to as “cuts,” before being placed in a cardboard box for shipment. One of the most important innovations in meatpacking during the last decades of the twentieth century was the development of this boxing operation, which has largely replaced the traditional method of shipping whole cattle carcasses to butcher shops and retail outlets. Today, boxed beef is usually shipped directly to retailers, who are then required to provide only a minimal amount of additional preparation before the beef can be served or sold to the final consumer.

International trade in cattle and beef is now dominated by a few large exporting and importing countries. The United States is the world’s largest beef and veal producer, though it holds a relatively small portion of the total international beef market. Other large beef-exporting countries include Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Canada, and Australia. Large beef-importing countries include Japan, South Korea, the United States, Canada, and Mexico. As the international trade in beef has increased, animal disease control and food safety have received increased attention. For example, concerns related to standardizing trade issues affected by bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or mad cow disease) and foot-and-mouth disease have become important issues in the international beef trade. Concerns regarding input use, such as growth-enhancing hormones, and the tracking of animals and meat have also resulted in trade frictions, especially between the United States and the European Union.

Systems for producing beef in the developed world are differentiated primarily by the types of feeds used during the final stages of growing the animal prior to slaughter. This final feeding stage is referred to as “finishing.” In locations with abundant forage resources, cattle are primarily finished by grazing the animals. For instance, grass-fed beef is the primary type of beef produced in Argentina, Brazil, and Australia. In locations with abundant grain supplies, cattle are typically finished by feeding them grains. Grain-fed beef is common in North America, especially the United States and Canada.

The modern beef industry in the developed world faces a number of significant challenges. Some of these are related to the relatively small number of large firms involved in meatpacking and food retailing, which leads to fears on the part of farmers and consumers that these firms may have too much influence on prices and the variety and types of beef products that are available.

Other challenges involve building better connectivity and coordination in the marketing channel between the processes used to produce beef and the characteristics desired by consumers. For example, some consumers perceive that there are significant inconsistencies in the tenderness and flavor of beef, both of which are desirable characteristics, from one eating experience to the next. A growing number of consumers in developing countries are also demanding more information about the types of inputs and processes used to produce beef. This has led to more information being provided to consumers about beef products through labeling and certifications. For example, certifications such as “organic,” assurances about the beef being produced under “natural” conditions, and assurances about the traceability of the beef are becoming more common. Traceability is defined as being able to track the beef product backward through all handlers and processors in the marketing chain to the original farm where the animal was born.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lesser, William. 1993. Marketing Livestock and Meat. Binghamton, NY: Food Products Press.

United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs. 2005. Statistical Yearbook. New York: United Nations Publications.

DeeVon Bailey

International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences

Cattle Industry

views updated May 17 2018

CATTLE INDUSTRY

Cattle have been domesticated for thousands of years. Since approximately 4000 b.c. cattle have been utilized for their meat, blood, milk, and skin, and have also been used as draft animals. The two most prevalent species of cattle are Bos taurus, found mainly in the Western world, and Bos indicus, which includes the Brahman cattle found in India and other Middle and Far Eastern countries. Cattle are ruminants, eating grasses and grains.

The modern cattle industry had its earliest beginnings in eighteenth century Europe. Farmers began to selectively breed cattle to try to increase the quantity or quality of their cattle products, or to produce cattle that were hardier and better suited to their geographic area. An Englishman, Robert Bakewell (1725–1795), is credited as being the first to promote selective animal breeding, a successful practice which continued throughout the twentieth century. Eventually, cattle societies and registries were formed to keep track of new breeds of purebred cattle. Crossing two or more breeds together was also done to improve specific attributes. In the late 1990s, the numerous popular cattle breeds for producing beef included the Charolais, Hereford, Angus, Shorthorn, and Brahman. Dairy cattle breeds included the Holstein, Jersey, and Guernsey.

Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) introduced cattle to the New World in 1494, on his second voyage. Early colonists brought cows to Jamestown, Virginia, in 1611 and to the Plymouth Colony in 1624. Most of these cattle were English Shorthorn, a breed used to produce several types of cattle products. Pioneers traveling west often used oxen to pull wagons and plow, and herded cattle along as well. By the mid-nineteenth century, cattle production was an important industry in the Mid-West, and by the 1880s it had expanded westward to the Pacific.

It was during this time that the cowboy came into being in the American West. Cowboys were responsible for gathering cattle and moving them from place to place to graze on public lands. They also put together long cattle drives, where cattle from the Southern states were driven to markets for shipment by rail north for slaughter. Prices for beef were very competitive in the Northern States because the end of the American Civil War (1861–1865) had caused a shortage. Most of the large cattle drives occurred from 1866 to 1886. Driving cattle was a dangerous and difficult job. Cowboys faced the prospects of stampedes, lightening storms, and other hazards such as encounters with outlaws, Native Americans, and farmers who did not want cattle to pass near their herds, fearful of the deadly cattle disease known as "Texas fever." According to Cecil K. Hutson in a study of the Texas fever in Kansas, "collectively, with blizzards, drought, barbed wire, railroad expansion, settlement, foreign embargoes, and a more sophisticated urban palate, this cattle plague brought an end to the era of the long cattle drives."

Beginning in 1886, two years of severe drought interspersed with freezing winters put most of the remaining cattle ranchers out of business. After 1888, barbed wire fences prevented the open grazing that had been allowed previously. Cattle were more and more often contained to individual ranches, where windmills drew water for the herds. This was the beginning of the modern cattle industry in the United States.

In 1995, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) listed the United States as fourth in the world in the number of cattle and buffalo. The production of beef had become a systematized process in the United States. Cattle had to be raised and fattened, then shipped to slaughterhouses for processing; distributors would then sell and transport the meat to supermarkets and restaurants for retail sale to consumers. According to the USDA, in 1994 cattle products were "the leading commodity in 18 states." The January 1, 1997 Cattle Inventory Report, NDSS/USDA, stated that Texas was the 1995 leader in income from cattle, with Kansas second, and Nebraska a close third. The amount of beef produced in the United States rose steadily from 1993 to 1996.

Cattle production in the 1990s was the single largest contributor to American agriculture, with sales accounting for over $30 billion in 1995 alone. America was also a leading exporter of beef and cattle products, second in the world only to Argentina. In 1995, about sixty-four percent of all exported beef went to Japan, making the American cattle industry a key player in reducing the international trade deficit.

See also: Agriculture Industry, Barbed Wire, Cattle Drives, Cow Town, Cowboy, Westward Expansion