The Devastating Beef Changes Triggered by Cattle Stress

Picture Credit score: USDA, Flickr, CC BY 2.0

Cattle stress unleashes large modifications within the physique chemistry of cattle, which is unhealthy information for anybody attempting to provide tender flavorful beef.

I’ve written a number of articles on this web site figuring out all of the totally different ways in which livestock stress can creep into your cattle ending program and stop this. On this article I’ll discover the chain-of-events that occur deep inside meat fibers when cattle expertise stress and clarify how these modifications undermine beef taste and make meat robust.

Once we discuss stress, we have a tendency to speak about adrenaline: adrenaline is launched in response to emphasize, adrenaline makes muscular tissues tense, and adrenaline finally results in beef being robust and flavorless.

However that is an over-simplification – there’s truly extra to the story of how livestock stress impacts meat. Understanding what is de facto occurring will enable you design a greater cattle ending program and enable you to constantly produce extra tender flavorful beef.

Sugar is gas

To grasp how cattle stress impacts beef we’ve to start out our story with a more in-depth take a look at sugar and the steps that our our bodies take to transform meals into power.

All muscle motion is powered by sugar. The physique generates the power wanted for muscular tissues to maneuver by releasing sugar (often called glucose – a easy type of sugar) into the bloodstream. This glucose is then oxidized (burnt) by the muscular tissues because the power supply that drives muscle motion.

Glucose as an power supply

However the place does this glucose come from?

When cattle eat carbohydrates, sugars, and fat, these are all transformed to glucose by the digestive system. Even protein should be transformed to glucose to ensure that the physique to make use of protein as an power supply.

This glucose is then transported through the bloodstream to the place it’s wanted within the physique. Our personal our bodies operate the very same means.

Glucose is the gas that every one our our bodies use for power.

Every thing from cheese burgers to cotton sweet and grass within the pasture should be transformed to glucose earlier than their power could be accessed by our muscular tissues.

Glycogen and Fats: short-term power and long-term power storage

Carbohydrates and fat take time to transform to glucose, which is why the power we get from a meal is unfold out over many hours as an alternative of all being obtainable without delay.

Glucose, then again, does not stick round for very lengthy. It’s a very short-term sugar that will get carried round our our bodies in our bloodstream. It both will get used immediately or it’s quickly transformed right into a extra secure kind.

There are two several types of storage methods within the physique to retailer glucose. Glycogen and fats.

Glycogen is a extra complicated type of sugar, fashioned by merely becoming a member of a number of glucose molecules collectively. If glucose just isn’t used instantly to provide power, it bonds to different glucose molecules so it may be briefly saved as glycogen within the muscular tissues and liver.

However for a really long-term storage resolution, glucose and glycogen are transformed to fats, which is saved contained in the physique’s fats cells so the power could be cached for later use.

It is truly a fairly environment friendly system. Extra glucose-glycogen that’s not used instantly to provide power is transformed to fats.

Fats permits the power from glucose-glycogen to be saved indefinitely till a time after we don’t have sufficient readily-available glucose-glycogen left over from our final meal. If we run out of glucose-glycogen, our our bodies merely faucet into these fats reserves to reconvert a few of this fats again to glycogen, after which to glucose, to offer our muscular tissues with gas.

However when cattle stress will get launched into the combo, stress hormones – significantly adrenaline – begin to change how this glucose-glycogen-fat energy-storage system works. And these modifications have an effect on beef in fairly dramatic methods…

Adrenaline and the fight-or-flight response

Every time cattle (or people or every other mammal) expertise stress, their our bodies launch adrenaline into the bloodstream. This adrenaline offers muscular tissues with a chemical sign to organize them for motion.

This chemical sign accomplishes two issues. It tenses the muscular tissues, like coiling a spring to prepared it for motion. And it triggers an enormous and really fast conversion of saved fats again to glycogen in order that the muscular tissues have a prepared provide of gas ready in case rapid high-energy motion is required.

The physique can’t inform the distinction between stress brought on by a wolf – which requires a high-energy response – or by illness, excessively scorching climate, or a nutrient imbalance, which don’t require a high-energy fight-or-flight response. So far as cattle physiology is worried, it is higher to be protected than sorry.

It is an important survival technique, however not so nice for beef manufacturing.

The muscle tensing brought on by short-term stress persists even after slaughter. Muscle groups do not simply calm down again to regular simply because the butcher’s hammer makes the lights exit. That is partly why stress on the slaughterhouse, throughout transport, or in the previous couple of days earlier than slaughter will result in robust beef.

However the adrenaline set off that begins changing fats again to glycogen is a good greater downside…

Adrenaline and the glycogen flood

As I discussed above, adrenaline offers a sign to transform large quantities of saved fats again into glycogen. The physique isn’t taking any probabilities; from an power standpoint it is a very efficient option to prime the muscular tissues by getting ready an enormous power reserve in case an excessive muscle response is required. Adrenaline actually floods the muscular tissues with obtainable power within the type of glycogen.

And when that burst of power is required, it is fairly spectacular how a lot muscle energy this may launch. For this reason individuals are generally able to staggering feats of energy throughout an emergency.

Sadly for beef producers, the fats that’s transformed again to glycogen by the adrenaline surge is the dear fats saved deep contained in the microscopic intramuscular fats cells. Yup, these are the identical microscopic intramuscular fat cells required for beef tenderness and flavor.

The price to farmers producing beef is gigantic as a result of the adrenaline launched by cattle stress is basically sucking fats out of the exact same intramuscular fats cells which might be very important to creating beef tender and flavorful!

And that’s not the one downside. There’s additionally lactic acid…

Lactic Acid

As glycogen breaks down (as it’s oxidized by the muscular tissues and transformed to power), it produces a by-product referred to as lactic acid. Lactic acid is the stuff that makes our muscular tissues sore after we use them. It’s also acidic. And it takes a substantial period of time for the physique to interrupt it down and expel it.

Just a little lactic acid from common muscle exercise just isn’t an issue. Our our bodies are designed to interrupt it down and expel it at a fee that retains up with common muscle exercise.

However throughout heavy train or when the physique tenses up and floods the muscular tissues with glycogen as an adrenaline-triggered response to emphasize, the oxidization of a lot glycogen floods the muscular tissues with extra lactic acid than the physique can eliminate immediately. This build-up of lactic acid is what makes our muscular tissues burn throughout heavy train.

For the meat farmer, this surge of lactic acid is an actual downside. Lactic acid is acidic and it modifications the flavour of the meat. The extra stress that cattle expertise, the extra lactic acid will construct up within the beef and have an effect on meat taste.

Moreover, when cattle are beneath stress on the time they’re slaughtered, the large flood of glycogen that was launched by the adrenaline-trigger will nonetheless be current within the muscular tissues after the cattle are slaughtered.

And the issue with stress is that it takes a very long time to fade. Even when the slaughter course of itself was stress-free, an occasion that occurred weeks earlier can nonetheless be inflicting stress, which can be inflicting extraordinarily excessive concentrations of glycogen to persist within the muscle tissue when the cattle are slaughtered.

Unused extra glycogen within the muscle tissues on the time of slaughter is a really unhealthy factor. It merely stays inside the meat. With no-where to go, it breaks down and in addition converts to lactic acid.

As soon as the animal is not alive, this lactic acid is not being actively faraway from the physique. As an alternative it builds up within the meat, will increase the meat acidity, and degrades beef taste.

In circumstances of utmost stress or if cattle have skilled extended stress over prolonged durations of time, muscle tissues are flooded by a lot of this highly-acidic lactic acid after slaughter that the meat tissues start to interrupt down. This causes the meat to turn out to be comfortable, mushy, darkish and sticky, like a bruise. Taste deteriorates, it seems unappetizing, and its shelf life is dramatically diminished.

Excessive-stress cattle with the sort of beef are often called ‘darkish cutters’. This beef is so badly broken by the consequences of cattle stress that it usually should be marketed through different retailers, bought at a extreme low cost, or the impact could be so unhealthy that the meat should be thrown away altogether. Between 1% to 2% of all beef in the US are darkish cutters.

Cattle stress is preventable

Fortunately all these destructive results of cattle stress on beef are solely preventable. Merely understanding the chain response that stress unleashes on cattle physique chemistry is sufficient to inspire you to start out looking down and eliminating sources of stress in your cattle’s lives.

And it isn’t simply the farmer elevating the cattle that must be looking out for potential sources of cattle stress. The truckers transporting cattle to the slaughterhouse and the handlers and slaughterhouse employees additionally must do their half. If you happen to take the time to troubleshoot each stage of the cattle manufacturing course of from start to slaughter to attenuate potential sources of cattle stress you will be effectively in your option to constantly producing tender flavorful beef.

Need to be taught extra about get rid of cattle stress? There are two books that I extremely suggest, which train low-stress dealing with practices and clarify construct low-stress cattle dealing with amenities.

(Disclosure: I get commissions for purchases made utilizing Amazon hyperlinks in my put up.)

Moving ‘Em: A guide to low stress animal handling^{#CommissionsEarned} by Burt Smith is my absolute favourite guide about low-stress cattle dealing with. Your cattle herd will train you volumes about cow psychology and can give you infinite hours of leisure as you experiment with all of the cool ideas and low-stress dealing with methods mentioned on this guide.

Humane Livestock Handling by Temple Grandin

And I additionally extremely suggest Humane Livestock Handling: Understanding livestock behavior and building facilities for healthier animals^{#CommissionsEarned} by Temple Grandin. She is taken into account the world’s knowledgeable in cattle dealing with facility design due to her distinctive perspective into how cattle assume and understand the world. Along with offering worthwhile insights about how cattle expertise the world round them, her guide will enable you design a way more sturdy low-stress cattle dealing with facility and establish potential downside sources in slaughter amenities whenever you set out to decide on a slaughterhouse on your beef manufacturing program.

Do you might have any ideas for lowering cattle stress?

Eliminating cattle stress to stop it from undermining your beef manufacturing efforts requires being extraordinarily conscientious of how your conduct, your dealing with protocols, your infrastructure, and your grazing and feeding methods have an effect on your cattle. In case you have any tales or recommendations on monitoring down and eliminating cattle stress, please share them within the feedback part beneath or inform me about them through the use of my contact form.

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Thumbnail Picture Credit score: USDA, Flickr, CC BY 2.0