Two years into the New Generation Beef project, team leader Dr Nicola Schreurs said initial results indicate taking bobby calves with Jersey genetics and rearing them to eight, 10 or 12 months for processing delivers a product with market potential.
“We are also being careful to distinguish New Generation beef from veal, which, technically, under European Union definitions, it is. But veal brings its own often negative connotations we would rather avoid.”
Those negatives include animal welfare issues and even New Zealand’s traditional bobby calf trade has drawn more than its share of unwelcome welfare issues to the dairy sector.
Working in conjunction with Landcorp’s Pamu farms the researchers have found meat from the Jersey-cross bobby calves has gained strong taste acceptance in trials.
The meat from 10-month0old animals was the most preferred across the 8, 10, 12 and 18-month age spectrum offered in taste tests.
“Some would find eight-month beef a bit too mild while others would find little difference in taste between the 18-month animals’ meat and older sourced meat.”
The university’s food technology staff have also subjected the cuts to an array of objective tests including pH (flavour), shear factor (tenderness) and fat levels, all of which align with consumers’ perception of 10-month-old beef being most preferred.
Further work hopes to determine if pure Jersey calves and heifer calves from heifers could also fit into the preference profile.
“Ultimately, what we wanted to do was explore the options open to farmers to also fulfill what Pamu was aiming to do, which was to reduce the bobby calf output to zero off their farms.”
Schreurs said the researchers are still working on determining the economics of a system that keeps stock for such a short time, finishing at carcase weights significantly lower than traditional finishing weights and times.
“We would like to hope systems could be tailored for individual farm systems right across the country.
“As part of our modelling we are looking at different stocking rates, prices and smaller carcase weights with a masters student.”
While still early days in modelling and market development, meat processors are showing some interest.
“We have had good interest from Venison Packers Fielding. Multi species plants can see the opportunity for processing the smaller animals as another option.”
Some indications are the beef could sell for a price at or slightly above bull beef values.
Further work is going to not only examine the value of heifers from heifers but also compare steers to bulls of the same genetics, with some processing data just about to be analysed.
“These are still dairy-beef cross animals but down the track we would like to study the economics of straight Jersey animals.”
Environmental concerns about the impact of heavier beef stock on soils and accompanying waterway impacts also sit behind the Massey work.
“Running the lighter, smaller stock may provide some wintering options on more sensitive soils.”
Schreurs said the work fits in well with Beef + Lamb NZ Genetics work run by Rebecca Hickson who is testing dairy beef progeny to determine the optimum genetics for sires to put over dairy cows that will deliver offspring suited to beef farming.
“Hopefully, that work will reveal suitable New Generation Beef sires we can work with.”
Schreurs and her team have been pleasantly surprised by farmers’ interest and support in the project.
“We thought some would say ‘that’s not traditional beef’ but dairy farmers fully support it while beef farmers keep asking where they can send their 12-month beef animals to, even as we work to validate the economics.”
