Feed efficiency is the answer to almost every issue facing beef, so why isn’t it our priority?

This is a sea change from recent generations, where meat consumption was universally promoted for public health. In one generation after WWII, red meat production and consumption went from being subsidised and prioritised by governments across the world to being explicitly taxed and criticised.    

The primary criticisms are environmental, with methane and nitrogen excretions at the top of the list. Further criticisms involve land and water use competition with human food crops, and at the bottom, human health concerns around fat intakes. Reduced ‘pollution’ outputs and reduced resource use are therefore the topical social media for red meat industries. We might not agree with any of these, but they are what is getting talked about by our consumers.

In New Zealand, increased nitrogen and waterway regulation has reflected this social criticism under successive governments, and the beef cow population in particular has tracked downwards under this pressure.Given the irreplaceable role of cows in extensive hill and high country systems, this effect is far reaching.  There have been no levy-body or government answers for this important change to rural New Zealand: it has been ignored.

However, for New Zealand pasture systems, a major change to feed efficiency of slaughter beef results in both reduced methane and nitrogen excretion, and reduced resource use. A side effect is improved carcase quality and profit. So why isn’t this being advanced?

“As it stands today, feed efficiency in beef production is directly disincentivised by meat processors through the schedule and limited access suppressing early slaughter options.” – Brent Fisher, Banks Peninsula farmer

A research work in 2020 (King, Fisher and Gibbs) used five years of local beef data to demonstrate that slaughtering for a 300kg carcase at less than 18 months rather than the typical 28 months on grass resulted in an effective 100% reduction in methane and nitrogen outputs for that beast. By including the breeding herd, the reductions were still all above 30% for each carcase kilogram (Table 1).

How? By simply breathing and existing, energy and nitrogen use results in hydrogen (therefore methane) and nitrogen excretion in ruminants. Shorten the life cycle, reduce the outputs. As these outputs are proportional to liveweight, the second half of the life is more than half of the outputs.

Smaller changes can also be achieved with every month to slaughter removed, so some advantage can be achieved almost everywhere in the New Zealand beef industry. This is important because there are no magic potions that can reduce these outputs by 25% in New Zealand pasture-reared beef cattle, and despite the constant claims of something around the corner, there never will be. If there were, the purchase would add costs to production, and there is no path to constant administration of pharmaceuticals to hill-country beef except in the fairy tales told annually to secure yet more tax dollars for research funding.

This increase in feed efficiency for early slaughter requires better energy intakes, so both purposeful pasture management and winter forage feeding are necessary. So can we do this here? New Zealand leads planet Earth in both of these. Today, beef producers are finishing 300kg carcases at 18 months in New Zealand, then destocking their late summer and autumn, and maintaining an annual cycle that keeps stocking rates up to forage production. Feed efficiency pays, and drives profitability.

Why isn’t this encouraged across the industry?

There are many reasons why levy bodies or governments don’t recognise or advance existing innovations in livestock production, from inertia to vested interests to inadequate industry engagement. However, there is also a genuine structural issue with achieving early slaughter.

Consumers here and abroad buy New Zealand beef slaughtered and packaged by a small cluster of companies. Beef profit here is first and foremost from cull dairy cows and dairy bulls, hot-boned and sent to hamburgers abroad. New Zealand is unique internationally as the only spring-calving, winter dry dairy herd, and it is a juggernaut three times the size of Australia or Ireland.

The winter dry period and no carry-over cows means Kiwi dairy farms spill cows to the works in late summer and autumn, and the returns on pasture eaten by culls is less than a third of milking cows, so when they are culled, they need to be gone. The price paid for these reflects these realities, and this golden river of cows bought for nothing and with minimal processing costs is the main beef game.

As a result of this golden river of dairy animals, killing space in dairy seasons for prime beef is like the Loch Ness monster – everyone has heard of it, but no one has actually got hold of it. The schedule for prime beef reflects this, too.

But spring and early summer are always open for prime beef, and the typical 26–30-month-old geriatric steers with their far greater environmental impacts are a perfect fit. So producers have to wait out the second winter for access, and then the cattle all arrive together after the grass moves in spring, so the schedule tracks down with these too. Like casino owners, the processors just can’t lose with this model.

These realities are serious headwinds for spring-calving early slaughter systems in New Zealand. As it sands today, feed efficiency in beef production is directly disincentivised by meat processors through the schedule and limited access suppressing early slaughter options.

Moving forward with New Zealand beef

So, if we as producers want to meet the ‘moderate middle’ consumer who is already buying beef and wants to continue, we need to speak up on our real green credentials, and where New Zealand is ahead of the world. Maximising environmental care with early slaughter rather than magic potions, promoting our world-class ethical rearing standards and food safety systems should be the primary targets. These targets are both management and breeding concerns, and are easily achieved in many operations today, without further wobbling about.

However, there will have to be an industry emphasis on rewarding reductions of environmental impacts demonstrated by processors seeking and prioritising early slaughter beef.
This would be a major shift in their approach to environmental care, and is most likely a significant barrier to the New Zealand beef industry genuinely changing to better meet future consumer interests.

So both producers and processors have skin in this game. Producers can do more of what New Zealand already has demonstrated works, and processors can meet that effort with real incentives for feed efficiency and early slaughter, changes being easy to see in the access and schedule for this maximum ‘green credential’ beef.