Descent into madness

British beef farmers are being forced to radically rethink their production systems. As a result, we are fast becoming world leaders in concepts such as quality, traceability and production assurance schemes. It's just a pity it took an event as traumatic as the BSE crisis to make us take a long, hard, critical look and realise it had all gone horribly wrong.

At one time, British cattle breeders were the world leaders. Breeds such as the Aberdeen Angus, Shorthorn and Hereford were exported all over the world to found beef industries in North and South America, Australia and New Zealand.

The reason they were so successful and suited those new-found plains was that they had been developed to convert grass into cheap, tender beef. And I don't use these terms lightly. Such beef has fine textured meat with a marbling of fat, allowing it retain flavour and moisture during cooking.

But we lost most of our breeding advantages through an unfortunate set of circumstances that arose when we joined the EU.

Owing to our hill and upland regions in Scotland, Wales and the north of England, we developed a specialist suckler beef industry, where calves are reared naturally suckling their mothers and then fattened extensively on grass. Traditional, hardy hill breeds such as the Galloway, Highland, Luing or Welsh Black are crossed with "improver" breeds such as the Shorthorn to produce beef cows that are ultimately crossed with "terminal" beef sires such as the Aberdeen Angus or Hereford.

Developed over the centuries, this brilliant system combined the hardiness and mothering abilities of hill breeds with the beefy characteristics of the terminal sires. The snag was that most traditional breeds involved were slow-growing and produced lightweight carcasses that became overfat when pushed to heavier weights.

Continental Europe's beef industry developed along different lines. Intensively fed dairy bulls or crossbreeds from dairy cows were mated to the massive Charolais, Simmental or Limousin. Such cattle grow rapidly to heavy weights without getting fat and, unfortunately, EU beef subsidies were designed for these cattle and not our smaller, traditional breeds.

In the 1970s, British farmers rushed headlong into the new imported breeds. Herefords, Angus and Shorthorns were displaced by a whole host of European cattle.

There were teething problems. Cattle such as the French Limousin have small stomachs and literally couldn't eat enough of our hill grasses to thrive properly. And our small beef cows had difficulty giving birth to their monstrous calves, some almost twice the weight of our native breeds. But British cattlemen soon bred out those unwanted characteristics. On the plus side, we were breeding big, fast-growing, lean crossbreds that maximised our subsidies when sold into EU intervention stores.

I can hear you all screaming how wrong this was - we'd stopped producing beef for consumers. The new name of the game was to get as big a carcass as possible into the EU's freezer stores. Years later, the beef was to be given away to pensioners or sold at knock-down prices to hungry eastern Europe.

Deterioration

But things were to get even worse. Having displaced our traditional breeds, we no longer had a supply of replacement breeding females.

Further deterioration in beef quality came about when British farmers started buying crossbreds from the dairy herd that were artificially reared on milk substitutes and high-protein feeds. Narrow, lean Holstein cows may be superb milk producers but they do absolutely nothing for beef production. The Holstein influence on beef production has been dramatic - too many commercial beef cows are narrow and "un-beef like", reflecting their Holstein origins.

So, in the space of 25 years, we had developed a beef industry based on extreme dairy crosses, whose origins and methods of rearing were unknown, that were finally crossed with massive continental-type bulls to produce inedible beef which went into the EU's intervention freezers.

Our crowning achievement, though, was the development of something called silage bull beef.

Traditionally, we castrated our cattle, unlike the Europeans, who leave them entire as bulls. Bullocks grow more slowly than bulls and lay down fat at lighter weights. Bulls fattened intensively on cereals and slaughtered at 14 months produce lean meat ideal for some export markets and adequate for the home market as mince or sausage. Butbulls reared on cheaper, grass-silage-based diets grow to massive weights before they are ready for slaughter.

Inedible

We had created the ultimate! A massive, dark, sinewy, tough, totally inedible carcass ideally suited for long-term storage in an EU intervention freezer. Thank god for BSE!

To contain the rapidly reviving European mountain of unwanted beef, we are now being urged to slaughter at lighter weights and produce meat that the public will enjoy eating. And lower prices mean that intensive finishing systems are no longer profitable, and traditional pasture fattening at 18 months of age is again fashionable. It's amazing just how much beef was slaughtered at three years of age in pursuit of big carcasses. No wonder our beef had become so tough.

Farmers are now terrified of buying in diseases such as BSE from other farms. Traditional breeding policies are suddenly fashionable and everyone wants to breed their own replacements.

My one and only BSE case occurred six years ago in an Aberdeen Angus cross Holstein cow that had been bought as a young calf from a Cheshire dairy farm. That incident made me realise that the system was failing, and forced me to radically change my production methods.

I bought a traditional beef Shorthorn bull and crossed it with my entire herd of Angus cross Holstein cows for five years. The resulting Shorthorn cross cows are now mated with Angus bulls and produce cattle that will be castrated and grass-fattened as traditional 18-month steer beef.

My new system now perfectly mimics the one that my great-grandfather operated at the turn of the century. The cattle I produce are sold at a considerable premium through the Aberdeen Angus certified beef scheme, which not only assures customers of quality but that such beef has been produced to the highest standards of animal husbandry.

For years farmers were not told the ingredients of the cattle feed they purchased - such information was deemed commercially sensitive. Now it is a legal requirement to declare all ingredients and the use of doubtful ones such as meat and bone meal is banned.

Barcoding in advanced slaughter houses should enable every steak or punnet of mince to be traced right back to my farm. I can now tell you exactly when and where the animal the meat comes from was born, account for its sire and dam, and explain in detail its entire medical history, movements and production system.

Assuming it has been humanely and properly slaughtered, adequately hung, skilfully butchered and cooked with flair and creativity, such beef should be a gourmet experience for the luxury end of the market. So, it's over to you chefs!