Beef

• 1. Introduction

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  Beef is the culinary name for meat from cattle, and it has shaped human history for longer than most people realise. Paintings on the walls of Lascaux show hunters pursuing the aurochs, the massive wild ancestor of every cow alive today. Neanderthals ate that animal. So did the first farmers, who decided some tens of thousands of years after those hunts to keep aurochs rather than simply chase them. That decision set off a chain of consequences that now touches deforestation in the Amazon, the greenhouse gas balance of the entire planet, religious law in a dozen traditions, and the dinner plates of billions of people.

  How did an animal hunted on cave walls become the third most consumed meat on Earth? What made the United States build an empire out of longhorn cattle seized from Mexican grasslands? And why does a single serving of beef carry more environmental weight than almost any other food a person can eat? Those are the questions this documentary will answer.

• 2. Ancient Origins

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  Lascaux is not the only evidence that beef has deep roots. Neanderthals hunted the aurochs long before modern humans developed agriculture, and the fossil and genetic record shows that people domesticated cattle at least twice in history, possibly three times.

  The first domestication event happened around 10,500 years ago, producing the species Bos taurus. A second, more recent domestication occurred around 7,000 years ago in the Indian subcontinent, producing Bos indicus. A possible third event may have taken place around 8,500 years ago in Africa, where a potential third species, Bos africanus, may have arisen.

  The motivation was practical. Cattle offered not only meat but milk, leather, and labour. They could pull ploughs and carry loads. In India, their value in farming and transport made them so central to rural economies that veneration grew across the Vedic period, intensifying through the rise of Jainism and into the Gupta period. Maharaja Ranjit Singh later issued a proclamation against cow slaughter, and conflicts over that practice sparked riots that, in one incident in 1893, killed more than 100 people.

  The word beef itself carries the fingerprints of conquest. It comes from the Latin bōs, filtered through Old French into Middle English, while the word cow traces back to the Germanic cou. That split, between the animal in the field and the meat on the table, mirrors the same division found in pig versus pork, deer versus venison, and sheep versus mutton - a linguistic fault line left by the Norman Conquest.

• 3. The American Cattle Empire

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  In the United States, beef became big business through a very specific sequence of violence and acquisition. The Mexican-American War of 1848 transferred vast southwestern grasslands to the United States. The expulsion of the Plains Indians from those same regions and from the Midwest then cleared the land further. On that terrain, the American livestock industry took hold, starting primarily with the taming of feral and semi-feral Longhorn cattle.

  Chicago and New York City were the first cities to profit substantially from this expansion, through their stockyards and meat markets. What began as a regional industry became a national one, driven by refrigerated rail cars and the appetite of growing cities.

  By 2018, the United States produced 12.22 million tons of beef, more than any other country. Brazil came second at 9.9 million tons, and China third at 6.46 million tons. In export terms, 2020 figures showed Brazil as the largest beef exporter in the world, accounting for 23.50 percent of total global exports, with Australia second at 13.66 percent and the United States third at 12.41 percent. Together, Brazil, Australia, the United States, and India accounted for roughly 61 percent of the world's beef exports.

  Meeting that demand requires vast infrastructure. Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, commonly called factory farms or CAFOs, supply 70.4 percent of cows in the US market and 99 percent of all meat in the United States supply. That density creates conditions where E. coli strains, including the toxic variant O157:H7, can spread through the food supply; an analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council found that 42 percent of medically important antibiotic use in the United States was on cattle.

• 4. Environmental Cost

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  A 2021 study estimated that beef contributed about 4 billion tonnes, roughly 9 percent, of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions in 2010, counting the entire lifecycle from production through transportation to consumption.

  Cattle populations graze around 26 percent of all land on Earth, not counting the agricultural fields grown specifically to feed them. In the Amazon, around 80 percent of all converted land is used to rear cattle, and 91 percent of Amazon land deforested since 1970 has been converted to cattle ranching. Between 2005 and 2013-41 percent of global deforestation was attributed to the expansion of beef production. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has described ranching-induced deforestation as one of the main causes of species loss in the tropical rainforests of Central and South America.

  The resource mathematics are stark. The ratio of feed required to produce an equivalent amount of beef by live weight has been estimated at anywhere from 7:1 to 43:1, compared with about 2:1 for chicken. One estimate suggested that if Americans replaced beef with soybeans in their diets, that shift alone could meet between 46 and 74 percent of the reductions needed to achieve the greenhouse gas emission goals the United States pledged in 2009.

  Researchers are exploring solutions at the animal level. A 2021 CSIRO trial found that feeding cattle a diet containing 3 percent of the seaweed Asparagopsis taxiformis could reduce the methane component of their emissions by 80 percent. A separate study concluded that shifting feed compositions, production areas, and land restoration together could enable emissions reductions of 34-85 percent annually without increasing costs to global beef production.

  The 2019 IPBES Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services concluded that the beef industry plays a significant role in biodiversity loss, as species-rich habitats including large portions of the Amazon are converted to pasture. Around 25 to nearly 40 percent of global land surface is used for livestock farming, mostly cattle.

• 5. From Carcass to Cut

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  Butchers divide a carcass first into primal cuts, the large foundational sections from which everything else is derived. The term primal cut is deliberately different from prime cut, which describes quality rather than position on the animal. Because the legs and neck muscles do the most physical work, they are the toughest; tenderness generally increases with distance from hoof and horn.

  Premium steakhouses dry age beef for 21 to 28 days, or wet age it for up to 45 days, to achieve maximum effect on flavor and tenderness. Dry aging hangs primal cuts, usually ribs or loins, in humidity-controlled coolers. Evaporation concentrates the remaining proteins and increases flavor intensity, and molds that develop can contribute a nut-like flavor. The majority of the tenderizing effect occurs within the first 10 days.

  Cuts that resist ordinary cooking respond to moist heat: braising, stewing, and the French technique called sous-vide, meaning under vacuum. Sous-vide seals meat in airtight bags and submerges them in a precisely temperature-controlled water bath, sometimes for as long as 72 hours. The low, sustained heat is just sufficient to convert tough collagen in connective tissue into gelatin through hydrolysis, while the precise thermostat prevents overcooking.

  Across the globe, raw preparations have their own traditions. Steak tartare is a French dish of finely chopped or scraped raw beef, served with onions, capers, Worcestershire sauce, and sometimes raw egg yolk. In Ethiopia, tire siga or kitfo is eaten raw. Korean yukhoe uses tender rump steak ground and seasoned with soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil, and the juice of bae, a Korean pear, then topped with a raw egg yolk. Bresaola, an air-dried salted beef aged for about two to three months until it turns a dark red, almost purple colour, originated in Valtellina in the Lombardy Alps of northern Italy.

• 6. Health, Religion, and Law

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  The International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies unprocessed red meat as probably carcinogenic, with the strongest evidence pointing to colorectal cancer. For processed red meat, the IARC found what it described as convincing evidence of cancer causation in humans. The World Cancer Research Fund recommends limiting red meat consumption to no more than three servings per week. Studies have also linked high red meat intake to elevated risks of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.

  In 1984, the use of meat and bone meal in cattle feed produced the world's first outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, popularly known as mad cow disease, in the United Kingdom. The disease spread to other countries. In May 2003, a case in Alberta, Canada prompted the United States to close its border to live Canadian cattle, a restriction not lifted until early 2005. In June 2005, a fully domestic case was confirmed in Texas by Dr. John Clifford, chief veterinary officer for the USDA animal health inspection service, who declined to identify the ranch involved.

  Religious restrictions on beef are ancient and geographically widespread. Hinduism prohibits the consumption of cow beef, known in Sanskrit as gomamsa. Ancient Egyptian priests also refrained from beef for religious reasons. In ancient China, the killing of cattle was prohibited because of their agricultural value. Nepal's cow is the national animal, and slaughter is prohibited by law. Cuba banned cow slaughter in 2003 due to a severe shortage of milk and milk products, then loosened the restriction on the 14th of April 2021.

  India's legal framework is particularly layered. Article 48 of the Constitution of India directs the state to take steps toward preserving bovine breeds and prohibiting the slaughter of cows and calves and milch and draught cattle. In 2017, a rule against the slaughter of cattle was signed into law as a modification of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960. Australian market analysts estimated at the time that a full beef ban in India could create a twenty percent shortage of beef and a thirteen percent shortage of leather in the world market.