Performing Beef Cattle Genetics Tests

By Susan Dawson


In the meat manufacturing industry, beef cattle genetics tests are very important things to go through before the livestock would be turned into consumable food. Sometimes, there would be some livestock that would be hereditary diseases or other disorders in them that would be harmful to consumers. Now if they do not go through proper testing in the farm, then the quality of the meat produce will be compromised.

When the livestock is still at the farm, the farmers have to know how to test the cows for their physical and inner traits. The first type of test they would do is the qualitative test which would check for any abnormalities with the physical aspect of any animal. These animals would be tested for proper body sizes, color, hair traits, or even horns.

The next test is known as the quantitative test which will measure certain things about the animal that can be calculated in numbers. Things like weight, amount of fat, and the amount of certain nutrients in the body of a cattle will really be measured. This is to ensure that all the statistics meet the standards of its manufacturer.

Now there is a type of testing that is known as sampling and this would involve getting bits of DNA from the cow to check if there are any problems with its genes. Laboratories would usually offer these types of kits to farmers who would want to check the condition of their livestock. These kits are fairly simple to use as there is also a guide on what steps to take.

Hair sampling is known to be the simplest way to be able to extract a piece of DNA and test it. Now this is the easiest because it just involves getting a bunch of hairs from the tail of the cow. After that, one will now be able to use these pieces of hair in order to extract some bits of DNA.

Now one would take note that when a cow is still very young, it will not have fully developed hair yet. In the situation, the more accurate but harder thing to do would be to get a blood sample instead and get some of the DNA from there. This can be done so that one will not need to do hair sampling.

For the blood sampling, it will not be as simple as pulling out a hair strand. This type will require using a syringe to draw out the blood from the body of a calf and then testing it. Once the blood has been drawn, then one will put it in a test tube where it will be tested.

Now before a farm would pass their animals to the manufacturers to sell to customers as raw meat, they have to make sure that all the beef cattle genetics tests have been performed. It is only through that process where the meat that is sold to customers will actually be safe to eat. As long as the animal is already tested and found to be clean, then it can be turned into meat.




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