Dairy Science Handbook

Vol. 15

Frank H. Baker

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780367169374
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429725210
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Biology
• Index: Biological Sciences

This handbook represents advanced technology in a problem-oriented form readily accessible to livestock producers, operators of family farms, managers of agribusinesses, and students of animal agriculture. It includes papers on farm and ranch business management and economics, and animal management.

Part 1
A Global View of Animal Agriculture

1
A Global Food-Animal Protein System: Pipedream or Possibility?

Charles G. Scruggs

Throughout the long ages of man, meat has been his primary food. Further, a surface study of archaeology seems to indicate that those civilizations that primarily depended on meat have been the most advanced. The telltale signs of man dating back as far as 10,000 years ago indicate that man was primarily a hunter--and thereby a meat consumer. Today, we marvel at the drawings of muscular bulls and heavy bison found on cave walls, drawings indicating the high regard early man had for meat animals.

Approximately 9,000 years ago, man began to domesticate animals. "At Zauri Chemi, dated 9000 B.C., many wild sheep had been killed when immature, as if the inhabitants had either fenced in the grazing grounds of wild sheep, penned herds, or even tamed sheep to the extent that they could control the age at which they were killed."

The earliest evidence of tame cattle is dated approximately 7000 B.C. By 2500 B.C. to 2300 B.C., the Egyptians were milking cows.

Again, a quick observation seems to indicate that civilizations that depended most heavily on cereals were often the least advanced. When animals were not present and man was forced to depend on cereals alone, the civilizations failed to flourish and often disappeared.

As man began to concentrate in cities, he still desired--indeed, seemed to prefer--meat. And meat animals were a lot easier to transport to the cities than were cereals. Meat animals had four legs. They could be driven to people. And so they have been for thousands of years.

As man moved into new territories, he often took his meat animals with him. Cattle and sheep have traveled with the armies of invaders and in the trains of the missionaries. These animals helped civilize the world. Some of the cargo on the earliest ships was live animals--incredible, when you think about the tiny vessels and harsh long voyages made as long as 2,000 years ago. And even 200 years ago.

The earliest hunters and travelers discovered that by drying or salting they could preserve and transport meat more easily. In fact, it comes as something of a shock to us in this day and time to find that more pounds of salted or pickled meat were exported from the U.S. to Europe and the West Indies over a hundred years ago than are exported fresh today.

Then we made great progress--refrigeration was developed. This was an amazing advance--fresh meat was available year round! But refrigeration also became a shackle and a chain. In recent years, especially in the U.S., we have become chained to our refrigerators. We can go only so far as we can take our refrigerators!

On the other hand, refrigeration has also brought to the U.S. and Europe unparalleled adventures in good taste, variety, and quality of meat. Refrigeration has allowed us in the U.S. to enter the roast, steak, and hamburger era in a way never thought possible. But it has also allowed U.S. beef producers to go wandering off into the insignificant. We began looking inward and forgot the rest of the world, thinking, "Those dumb people overseas wouldn't know good beef if they saw it."

Instead of seeking wider markets, we have spent our time over the last 70 to 80 years arguing over such insignificant things as horns or lack of horns; or whether a few hairs of a different color are wrongly placed; or trying to make bulls and cows look like steers. Now we are rushing about and exchanging thousands of dollars on the difference of a centimeter or two in testicle size, trying to put legs on cattle that might look better on thoroughbred horses. And, oh, the hours we spend washing, puffing, combing tail hair so as to make a nice round-looking ball at the end of a show animal's tail! Insignificant fadism in the extreme!

We in the U.S.-—the greatest food-animal producers in the world--have perhaps been so busy arguing over minute details of grade standards, which no one but a few experts understand, and over other inward-looking insignificant details, that we have missed the greatest world market for meat that has ever existed since the earliest Homo sapiens killed their first Bos primigenius (auroch or wild ox). In short, "we have been so busy fightincj gnats that we let the herd get away."

There is a big world all around us--some four billion people--all hungry for meat! There are in this populous world of ours today approximately one billion people who exist at a malnourished level. Most of the people in the world today do not get the health benefit that we have proved comes from a diet in which food animal protein is the major ingredient. If, indeed, it is true that a good diet containing major elements of food animal protein makes for more intelligent, more ambitious, harder working people, doesn't it follow that U.S. livestock producers should seek to contribute that food animal protein to mankind--at a profit? Would not this contribution be greater than wars or multibillion dollar giveaway programs?

Think about it I What if the approximately 800 million Chinese could be induced to consume only one (1) pound of food animal protein per year above their present one pound? What would demand for 800 million pounds of meat do for beef, pork, sheep, and goat--food-animal--producers in the U.S.? Add to the Chinese the Russians, the Indians, and the Southeast Asians, and you have a need for food-animal protein that boggles the mind!

Thus, U.S. livestock producers must move from their present "cowboy" mentality to one in which they seek to become world marketeers of food-animal protein. We must move from being little more than herders to thinking of ourselves as food-animal producers whose goal is to sell meat protein to a hungry world--at a profit!

And this shift to world food-animal-protein suppliers can be made while we continue to supply the American consumer with desired beef, milk, pork, and mutton.

• How?
• Think big.
• Think systems.

Let's be more specific. Here are what I believe to be the essential elements of developing a Global Food Animal Protein System.

Phase I. Search out a small or medium-sized country that has unfulfilled nutrition and food problems, heavy population density, and a reasonable amount of foreign exchange.

Study the food habits of the population in detail. Find out exactly how the people prefer to eat meat. Learn all there is to know about their overall food habits, preferences. Study their tariff laws, their customs, their religion--everything that could make an impact on their meat consumption. Learn to think as the natives think and react.

All the while your goal is a modest one: Increase per capita meat consumption, on the average, by one (1) pound.

The key to this phase is to drop the American habit of turning up our noses at the way other people like their meat. Just because we like roasts, there's no reason that all the rest of the world must eat roast the way we do. If the natives want barbecued tail bone, let's not call them stupid and say there is no market, and retreat to the nearest McDonald's. Let's sell them tail bones! The goal is a good old American custom: Study a market, decide what can be sold at a profit, then produce it well enough to earn a profit.

Phase II. Devise a production and processing system to deliver the product without waste of time or effort from conception to consumption. We in U.S. agriculture now do just exactly the opposite: We produce something and then try to peddle it in the form we want--or "to hell with 'em."

Phase III. Take the basic lessons learned in one country with modest goals, and apply them to other countries one by one--at a profit. Soon, we will have made a world contribution.

Let's explore some other dimensions of the idea of supplying food-animal protein to a malnourished world.

Let's look at Russia. Russia desperately needs meat. At present, they get their meager supplies from their own limited meat production system. They import some meat from Australia and some from their satellite European countries, but not nearly as much as the Russian population needs and wants. Instead of importing meat, the Russians are trying to do it the long, hard way: Import grains from all over the world, then process and feed them through their herds and flocks.

Has the U.S. ever seriously studied with the Russians (or the Hungarians, or the Saudi Arabians) a policy of importing ready-to-consume meat products (mutton and chicken) instead of raw grains and the resulting timelag to consumers? Wouldn't it be possible, technologically, for us to ship lean grass beef to Russia at a profit? Russians prefer beef that tastes much different from our own grain-fed beef. Mostly they get cull cow or bull beef--if they get any beef at all. Let's sell them what they are used to eating.

We can load forage-produced boneless beef on planes at Atlanta or Dallas, go up to 35,000 feet and quick-freeze it at no cost, and land it in Moscow 16 hours later. Too expensive? We don't know. So far as I know, we have never even tried it. Flying too much moisture? We can dehydrate beef fibers, reconstitute them in Istanbul or Pakistan. Remember our hunting, frontier-busting forebears? How did they transport beef supplies when traveling alone? Jerky beef. It needed no refrigeration. Wouldn't a malnourished native of Gambia be glad to have some jerky beef to mix with his root foods and maize?

American technological expertise is envied the world over. But we haven't used our skill to try to supply food-animal protein to a food-deficient world. Can we not preserve meat and milk through irradiation and/or treatment so that it can be held on a pantry shelf? Good U.S. agricultural policy, it seems to me, should be one that uses U.S. technical advantages to the benefit of the U.S.-—and then for other citizens of the world. If so, we must begin to shift from a policy of shipping raw, unprocessed grains to a policy of exporting value-added, more nearly ready-to-eat food-animal products. The U.S. has the livestock. We have more feed and feedgrains than anyone. We have the nutrition knowledge. We have financing. Shouldn't we ship food-animal protein products and short-circuit the long food production chain that most countries now are trying to establish by buying our grain and soybeans?

What about the strategic military considerations of such a policy? Ship food protein ready to eat instead of supplying grain? That should be the U.S. goal. We must do this instead of supplying grains so the countries can build their own livestock infrastructure for future self-sufficiency.

The U.S. food-animal production industry has seen some quantum jumps in the last few years in development of alltender, flavorful meat products. Meat protein cubes, dehydrated meat fibers, ready-cooked meals are just a few of the new forms and products pouring out of labs. More are about to emerge. However, we cannot hope to supply all the world with edible animal protein. Perhaps we should adopt this policy: Sell edible animal food protein to those countries whose needs are greatest and most immediate. To those countries with developed livestock industries, sell genetic and germ plasm materials to use in upgrading their production. This whole field of genetic engineering now in its infancy in the U.S. may shatter much of our previous livestock thinking. Livestock producer leaders must be equally bold in their thinking!

I have no doubt that if U.S. food animal producers--at one time called cowmen, sheepmen, dairymen--would set out to develop a Global Food Animal Protein System, they could do so rather easily. But to do so they must throw off the shackles of the past, think aggressively American, think profit, think systems, and above all think BIG.

* * *

"Populations of the lower- and middle-income countries still are increasing rapidly, and in many countries there is a growing number of affluent people whose diets are being upgraded to include more red meat, dairy products, and eggs. As more countries are unable to meet their national requirements for staple foods, their governments are looking for outside sources of supply, often on an urgent basis. It is dangerous politically for national leaders to let food shortages occur, driving prices up; they run the risk of unrest, violence, and even overthrow of governments."

Beyond the Bottom Line
The Rockefeller Foundation

References

Fagan, B. M. Men of the Earth: An Introduction to World Prehistory. Little, Brown and Co.

2
Foundation of Civilization: Food

Allen D. Tillman

"And he gave it for his opinion that whoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass grow on a spot of ground where only one grew before would deserve better of mankind and do more service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together."

—Johnathan Swift The Voyage to Brobdingnag in Gulliver's Travels

I chose this quotation because it is apparent to me that man now has the knowledge and power to make two ears of corn or two blades of grass grow on a spot of ground that formerly would grow one or less.

Civilization is defined as "an advanced state of human society in which there is a high level of culture, science, industry, and government." The high level of civilization that we enjoy today has resulted from many technological developments in agriculture that increased the amount of food produced and the efficiency of human labor in producing it. Each innovation freed more people for the development of human society and of the culture, science, industry, and government found in it.

In discussing some of the developments, this paper is divided into major sections as follows: (1) a brief history of agricultural development worldwide; (2) the close relationship o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Part 1. A GLOBAL VIEW OF ANIMAL AGRICULTURE
• Part 2. GENERAL CONCEPTS AFFECTING AGRICULTURE AND THE INDUSTRY
• Part 3. GENETICS AND SELECTION
• Part 4. PHYSIOLOGY, REPRODUCTION, AND MANAGEMENT
• Part 5. ENVIRONMENT, BUILDINGS, AND EQUIPMENT
• Part 6. FEEDS AND NUTRITION
• Part 7. HEALTH, DISEASE, AND PARASITES
• Part 8. MASTITIS AND RELATED TOPICS
• Part 9. COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY
• Part 10. THE FUTURE OF THE DAIRY INDUSTRY
• List of Names and Addresses of the Lecturers and Staff
• List of Other Books of Interest Published by Westview Press and Winrock International