The Meat Quality Characteristics of Holstein Calves: The Story of Israeli ‘Dairy Beef’

Global animal production systems are often criticized for their lack of sustainability and insufficient resilience to ensure food security. The ‘farm-to-fork’ approach aims at orienting food systems towards the creation of a positive environmental impact, nutritious, healthy, safe and sufficient foods, and fairer economic returns for primary producers. Many countries rely on an imported supply of live animals to fulfill their needs for fresh meat. In Israel, ~60% of the sources of fresh beef come from the import of live animals. In order to encourage sustainable beef production in Israel, the proportion of local beef should be raised at the expense of imported animals. However, for this to be achieved, the superior performance of local beef should be justified. The current study was conducted to compare between the meat quality characteristics of local (Israeli Holstein; N = 205) vs. imported (Australian; N = 169) animals. Generally, while the imported calves presented a higher dressing percentage (p < 0.0001), the local animals were characterized by tenderer meat (p < 0.0001), longer sarcomeres (p < 0.0001), higher a* color attributes and pH (p < 0.001), superior cooking (p = 0.002) and thawing loss (p < 0.0001), higher intra-muscular fat (IMF) content, and a higher PUFA proportion (p < 0.01 and p < 0.0001, respectively) and PUFA:SFA ratio. The findings shown herein may provide sound arguments for stakeholders and policy makers to facilitate sustainable local beef production in Israel.