Boosting Australia's Biggest Beef Business
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Boosting Australia’s biggest beef business Discovery! 150 new DNA markers How to boost beef business profit by at least 5%! Fine tuning the beef supply chain Creating a global beef language with MSA Research: Breeding sires of the future December 2006 Contents CRC research boosts AAco’s bottom line . .3 Fine tuning the beef supply chain . .4 Creating a global beef language with MSA . .5 Boosting beef business profits by 5% . .6 Knowing the future performance of your herd, years ahead of time . .7 On tap - 150 new DNA markers discovered by Beef CRC . .8 Watching the DNA marker pipeline with interest . .9 On the smell of an oily rag - cattle using less fuel and Editor’s Note giving off fewer gases . .10 Welcome to the second edition of the Beef Bulletin. Getting the beef mix just right! . .11 The new Beef CRC is now 18 Beef CRC News snippets . .12 months old and well and truly hitting its straps. Over the past year several research milestones Who are we? Beef CRC Board Profile . .17 have been achieved and exceeded. Photo feature: Swans Lagoon Research Station . .18 There is no better an example than the number of new DNA markers that have been discovered. Beef Breeding Brahman sires of the future . .20 CRC scientists have located more than 150 markers and while not all Marbling Biology: what do we know about getting of them will commercialised, this fat into muscle? . .23 number is a far cry from the initial prediction of 10 per year. Composite Breeding - what’s in it for the breeder? . .26 As the world of genetic technologies Animal welfare research: continues to evolve the Beef CRC’s Breeding the horns off cattle . .29 research thread of gene discovery Beef CRC Research Program Updates . .32 and gene expression will become effortless, as will the integration of emerging genetic technologies Beef CRC publications . .34 into beef production. Forecasts like Professor John Gibson’s on 2007 Calendar of Events . .36 page 7 which predicts that by 2010 cattle breeders might be able to generate an accurate assessment of a bull or dam’s future performance within months of its birth, has the beef industry optimistic about the A message from future ahead. In another Beef Bulletin story, the CEO the woman behind Australia’s It is now 2 years since the successful renewal highest marbling herd reiterates of Beef CRC was announced and 18 months the growing importance of since CRCIII officially commenced - and what understanding genetics and urges a hectic period those past 2 years has turned out “a high level of genetic literacy to be! It is with genuine pleasure that we are is absolutely necessary for a stud able to reflect on a very successful and relatively breeder these days.” smooth transition from CRCII to CRCIII and In this edition of the Beef Bulletin look forward to what promises to be a very we have also highlighted our strong exciting future. relationship with industry. Working I would like to most sincerely thank the CRC Board and Management Committee, with Australia’s largest pastoral and CRC staff at CRC headquarters and throughout the CRC network for all their company to lift the market potential input, assistance and particularly their commitment and dedication to the CRC over and thus income of its Bos indicus that period. I would also like to gratefully acknowledge the ongoing support, input, herd, creating reliable supply chain encouragement and generous funding of our beef industry partners, particularly strategies to deliver feedback to Meat and Livestock Australia, Australian Lot Feeders’ Association, Cattle Council producers from Australia’s largest of Australia, Meat and Wool New Zealand, the Northern Pastoral Group of processors and tailoring individual Companies and individual seedstock and commercial breeders in northern and production systems to capitalise on southern Australia who continue to contribute so effectively to the success of this regional market specifications are Beef CRC. just a few of the stories highlighting the Beef CRC’s research at work, I hope all of you have a very happy, safe and wet festive season and New Year and work which is value adding I look forward to working with you all in 2007. Australia’s beef industry. Enjoy the Beef Bulletin and the festive season. CRC research boosts AAco’s bottom line NEWS eef CRC research has which each have 25 underpinned a decade of per cent Charolais and Bevolution by Australia’s largest 25 per cent Senepol pastoral company, which has moved genetics. (Senepol is its 500,000-head operation from a tropically-adapted being a traditional commodity- Caribbean bos taurus meat pastoral operation to a breed). The remainder sophisticated player across all facets of the Barkly of the beef market. genetics is made up In the mid 1990s, when the Australian of Santa Gertrudis; Agricultural Company began a the remainder of program of lifting the genetic and the Gulf, which market potential of its bos indicus comprises the bulk of herd, it had to base its breeding AAco’s composites, is decisions largely on traditional Brahman. subjective values. In the company’s AAco chief executive Don Mackay feedlots, composite recalls a time of “easy steps” as the cattle can return company worked to lift the eating a gross margin quality and performance of its premium of $52 Brahman and Santa Gertrudis cattle per adult area (AE) by creating its own terminal cross over their Brahman Don Mackay and Greg Norman and composite animals. counterparts. AAco “The MSA pathways have provided figures show that 60 per cent of But the hesitancy progressively lot-fed composites deliver a $9/ us with a level of certainty about disappeared as results from the Beef AE premium on tenderness, 15 per the way our product is going CRC began shining light on formerly cent of composites have a $5/AE to grade, and it’s given us an hidden regions of the beef cattle premium on marbling, and overall, opportunity to present a branded genome, and on the factors affecting product to the world.” eating quality. composite growth rate and feed AAco may ultimately not have gone down the highly successful path it took, had it not been for the Beef CRC Barkly Com o’s po In retrospect, Mr Mackay says, Ac si efficiency is worth $38/AE over A te AAco may ultimately not have the Brahman. Off grass, composites gone down the highly successful deliver on average an extra 5 cents path it took, had not the Beef CRC per kilogram premium on tenderness - which the company has heavily payments alone. invested in from the outset - given it a scientific basis on which to make AAco contributed its own genetics to the transformation. the ground-breaking work of the first “High quality beef production in a two Beef CRC programs, Mr Mackay northern environment then looked said, and the exercise proved the problematic,” Mr Mackay says. “It’s capacity of those genetics to thrive less likely that we would have gone in a northern environment. ahead, or we would have at least Beef CRC research that contributed taken things more quietly, if the to the Meat Standards Australia Beef CRC’s work hadn’t been there (MSA) grading system then enabled to verify what we thought was right AAco to extend its program into the when it came to producing composite meat quality area. Gulf C cattle in northern Australia.” o’s omp Meat quality, along with herd health, Ac o Where AAco once used the A si te traditional northern strategy of is for Mr Mackay increasingly an annual muster across its seven defining Australia’s position in the million hectares, pulling off fats competitive global beef market. and culls that were sold mostly into When AAco started down the high- commodity-grade beef markets, quality path, he says, only about 40- the company today runs a highly 50 per cent of its carcasses complied sophisticated operation that spans with MSA standards. Now it the market range, from premium consistently gets compliance “in the branded beef to value-added and high 90s”. “If we were trying to rely commodity products. on a breed, or days on feed, to give AAco has developed two composite us a consistent standard, we would breeds, the Barkly and the Gulf, have many failures,” he says. Fine tuning the beef supply chain NEWS t’s been talked about for years, providing gross margin tools which knowledge that they can customise and small beef brands have producers customise to their specific the system to their own advantage. often tried - and nearly as often production system to see whether failedI - to make it work: a system There are 5 supply chains different pathways can earn them a participating in the project across that builds profitable self-correcting better return.” alliances between beef producers Australia involving a total of about and processors. Working from the other direction, 500,000 cattle per year. the Beef CRC is also developing a That should begin to change this “Each supply chain will work means of predicting how an animal year [2007], as Beef CRC research, independently allowing each chain MSA and NLIS data are used to will slaughter well before it reaches to have their own emphasis on what build information bridges between the abattoir. they consider important for their producers and processors. The aim is to boost the number of cattle meeting market specifications by 20 per cent There are 5 supply chains participating in the project across over the next few years. Australia involving a total of about 5,000,000 cattle per year The project has two aspects that will eventually feed off each other with information to ensure ever- “At the moment, our ability to market.