Cattle Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Cattle are domesticated bovine ruminants raised primarily for milk, meat, hides/leather, and/or labor. Cattle in many communities around the world symbolize status, as well as serve significant social and ritual functions through exchange as dowries, inheritance, and/or gifts.

The etymology of the term cattle underscores the claim that cattle are “wealth on the hoof” to pastoralists, agro-pastoralists, ranchers, and other enthusiasts. The Oxford English Dictionary traces “cattle” to an ancestral word, catel, which referred to property, wealth, and capital. Over time, the word became synonymous with moveable property or wealth. By the 16th century, English usage of catel privileged livestock, and the 17th century marked the beginning of the usage of cattle for livestock, while the Anglo-French chattel retained the broader meaning of property or article of property.

Applications of the term cattle have varied over time and place. The term cattle now typically refers to calves, heifers, cows, bulls, steer, and oxen, thus restricting the term to the bovine genus. But in some localities, the designation of cattle has also included sheep, goats, horses, mules, camels, swine, and other animals.

There are approximately 1.4 billion head of cattle (bovine) in the world today, all of which probably descended from the now extinct aurochs (Bos primigenius). Once widespread in Europe, southern Asia and North Africa, aurochs were domesticated at least 8,500 years ago, during the Neolithic Era. They became of great economic importance to farmers, as the animals provided food for humans, directly through their milk and meat, and indirectly through their labor and fertilizing manure. Because cattle are ruminants, they can digest plant foods that humans cannot. Cattle thus transform areas that are not suitable for farming into productive lands by eating grasses and other high cellulose plants, which they then convert into protein, fat, and other nutrients. Small-scale livestock herding, as practiced by pastoralist populations, has proved well-suited to marginal lands. But, as human populations continue to escalate and the rural poor are pushed from viable resource bases, pastoralists struggle to maintain adequate herds.

Through selective breeding, humans have assisted in modifying the genetic makeup of aurochs’s offspring. Today, the resultant cattle have been classified into over 270 breeds, which are typically divided into two major species: Bos taurus (European breeds) or Bos indicus (zebu breeds). These divisions are oft-contested, but breeders and the livestock industry oversee decisions about when animals constitute a distinguishable breed. Cattle do remain closely enough related to some other Bovids, such as bison and yak, that they can be interbred and produce viable offspring (e.g., Beefalo as offspring of American Bison and domestic cattle).

Despite the seemingly wide variety, certain cattle breeds dominate commercial beef and dairy production, which are in turn dominated by large corporations. As Eric Schlosser describes, the growth of fast food restaurants and franchise grocery stores has encouraged the meatpacking industry in the United States to consolidate to the point that the top four meatpacking firms account for over 80 percent of the cattle slaughtered in the United States. This has deflated prices that ranchers get for cattle and forced many ranchers out of the business altogether. For both beef and dairy production, many family ranches and farms have been replaced by Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or feedlots. Cattle are bred and fed so that their rates of maturation have increased. The spread of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (mad cow disease) and the overproduction of methane have been attributed to this trend. Such trends are also occurring in many parts of the world, as demands for cattle products increase while per capita holdings decrease.

Following the logic of economies of scale, the desire to increase productivity and profitability in the beef and dairy industries has fueled certain types of biotechnology. For example, in 1993 Monsanto Corporation’s bovine somatotropin (rBST), a genetically engineered bovine growth hormone, was approved by the Federal Food and Drug Administration for use in the United States to increase the production of milk in commercial dairy cows. The context for the approval of rBST and the consequences of its uses have remained highly controversial. Still, research focusing on genetic modification (GM) continues, with attempts to produce GM cash crops for cattle feed, GM cows that may present resistance to mastitis or tick-borne diseases, and more.

Bibliography:

Valerie Porter , Mason’s World Dictionary of Livestock Breeds, Types, and Varieties, 5th ed. (CABI Publishing, 2002);
Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (Perennial, 2002).