IFJ Junior: what’s the beef with your burger?

While many people will answer meat and milk when asked what comes from cows, not many would say shampoo, but it is one of the many products which use ingredients that come from cows.

In a time when it’s important for us all to recycle and reduce waste, cattle are a great example of finding a use for everything – from their hooves to their hair.

Beef cattle produce a range of different beef cuts, from mince beef to filet mignon steak cuts. Dairy cattle produce milk, the raw ingredient for cheese, yogurt, butter and ice cream. Other dairy products include sour cream, cottage cheese, whey, cream cheese and condensed milk.

Dairy cattle also produce meat with about 60% of the current annual meat processing of cattle coming from the dairy herd, in the form of cull cows and dairy beef.

The Irish dairy herd has been growing with the suckler herd reducing. In 2010, 60% of Ireland’s beef production came from the suckler herd and 40% from the dairy herd. This has changed in the last 10 years with 60% now coming from the dairy herd and 40% coming from the suckler herd.

Health benefits of beef

Beef sometimes comes in for bad publicity, but eating too much processed meat of any kind can lead to health issues. The important thing to remember is to eat a balanced diet. Meat, eggs, fish, poultry, beans and nuts are all high in protein and important for muscle development and general health. Omega 3s are essential nutrients that have proved beneficial for preventing and managing things like heart disease and high blood pressure.

Grass-fed beef is leaner and higher in key nutrients such as vitamins, antioxidants, and conjugated linoleic acid, the latter of which has been found to improve immunity and inflammation.

Meat yield

Everybody is familiar with a beef burger – for cooking at home or purchased in a takeaway. If we take a standard size of a burger as a quarter pounder, this weighs approximately 0.11kg. With a carcase weighing 331kg, when we take the bone out, this leaves about 230kg of meat that could be minced.

Obviously, processors don’t mince the entire carcase as cuts of meat like steaks and roasts are worth a lot more to

processors to sell as entire cuts rather than mince. This means that the 230kg of boneless meat in a carcase is the equivalent of almost 2,100 quarter pounder burgers.

Beef facts