Export of New Zealand Beef to Taiwan

choi

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Press Release: Farmer Levies Build Grass-fed Beef Brand In Taiwan. Meat &
Wool New Zealand, Mar. 30, 2010
http://www.meatandwoolnz.com/main.cfm?id=31&nid=273

My comment:
(a) I am not going to get involved in dispute whether grass-fed or grain-fed
beef is better environmentally or in terms of nutrition or taste. The
purpose of this posting is to let you know there are these two ways of
raising cows for meat.
(b) levy (n): "1a: the imposition or collection of an assessment  b: an
amount levied"   www.m-w.com

Definition 1b is what it means here.

(c) New Zealand's beef is grass-fed, but America's, corn-fed.
(d) Feedlot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedlot
(used in factory farming for FINISHING livestock; Prior to entering a
feedlot, cattle spend most of their life grazing on rangeland or on immature
fields of grain such as green wheat pasture")

Note: In feedlots, cows frequently are fed with corn, in part because US
subsidy makes corn cheap and in part because corn fatten cows more quickly
than if they are on grass.

(e) Cattle feeding
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_feeding
("The cow's diet affects the flavor of the resultant meat and milk. A 2003
Colorado State University study found that 80% of consumers in the Denver-
Colorado area preferred the taste of United States corn-fed beef to
Australian grass-fed beef, and negligible difference in taste preference
compared to Canadian barley-fed beef.")

(f) Michael Pollan, Power Steer. New York Time Magazine, Mar. 31, 2002.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/31/magazine/power-steer.html?pagewanted=1

I do not think you will be patient enough to read the whole article (I was
at the time). The summary is this freelance reporter followed the life of a
steer by buying oit before it was born. The following quotations are from
web page 2. (Note: A cow's gestation period is approximately nine months.)


"While the pork and chicken industries have consolidated the entire life
cycles of those animals under a single roof, beef cattle are still born on
thousands of independently owned ranches. Although four giant meatpacking
companies (Tyson's subsidiary IBP, Monfort, Excel and National) now
slaughter and market more than 80 percent of the beef cattle born in this
country, that concentration represents the narrow end of a funnel that
starts out as wide as the great plains.

"roundups in early summer to inseminate the cows ($15 mail-order straws of
elite bull semen have pretty much put the resident stud out of work)

"My steer spent his first six months in these lush pastures alongside his
mother, No. 9,534.

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