Swedish beef production has during the past year decreased while the consumption has increased. It´s imported beef that takes market shares. The purpose with this degreeproject is to investigate if the restaurants in Sweden are using imported or Swedish beef and the reason for their choice. The purpose is to find out if there is something the Swedish beef producers can change to increase Swedish beef in restaurants. My expectation is that the demand for Swedish beef will increase in restaurant and later even among consumers. I have interviewed ten chiefs in different restaurants and asked them the following questions: Is it the price, quality or something else that influences your choise? Does it matter to their customers if they serve Swedish or imported beef? How is the marketing of Swedish beef? It appeared both Swedish and imported beef on the restaurants.

To value the risk and opportunity for our production in Sweden it is necessary to understand the marketing development for beef cattle production in the world. We have chosen to look at the Brazil beef cattle production. They are one of the biggest producers, have good opportunity to develop further and have a big affect at the world market. The method of our work is to gather information from experts of beef cattle production, located in Brazil. We have also gathered information through studies of literature. The factors that will have a big influence at the Brazil beef cattle production during the upcoming years is more efficient land use, lower age of slaughtering and extended use of feedlot-system. Our conclusion is that the Brazil beef cattle will have a sharp increase during the next five years. The amount of pasture will not change during that time.

Beef production in Sweden has traditionally been about rearing of dairy calves to slaughter. With reduced number of dairy cows and accordingly less dairy calves for slaughter, there has been a need for new forms of beef production in Sweden. In Västerbotten there are good conditions for beef production with a high feeding level of roughage due to favourable climate. The aim of this thesis is to, through interviews with ten farmers with beef production in Västerbotten, study what and with how much they feed their animals and link the results to production level. The thesis begins with a literature review where the general feeding standards and feeding recommendations for beef cows and growing cattle are examined.

The objective of this study was to make an inventory and a potential analysis of the organic beef production in the region of Gävleborg, Sweden. A survey was conducted, where a questionaire was sent to all farmers in the region who had environmental subsidies concerning organic cropping systems in 2001. In total, there were 701 farmers, of which 46 % participated in the study. Three slaughter houses were interviewed to get their pictures of the development of organic beef production. The study shows that there are potentials and interests in the region to increase the production of organic beef.

Genomic selection (GS) is used for selection of breeding animals of dairy cattle. GS is though not as extensively used within the beef industry. One reason for that is the low accuracy (rTI) of the breeding value that is of great importance for the final genetic gain. Causes to the low accuracy are high effective population size, a small reference population and a genetically differentiated population. There is however a market for genomic selection with High Density (HD) tests for beef cattle.

Sustainable beef and milk consumption. The consumption of beef and dairy products in Sweden is high. A lot of greenhouse gases are emitted from the production of these products. The production of beef in Sweden has decreased but the import has increased. The number of dairy cows has decreased while beef-production with suckler-cows has increased in Sweden.

Sweden?s animal legislation was adopted in 1988 and is one of the most rigorous legislations in the world. Despite this, Sweden import beef from countries where animal legislation is not in accordance to the Swedish legislation. The meat consumption in Sweden has, just like the importation of beef, increased while Sweden?s own beef production has decreased.

ABSTRACT Skånskt Naturbeteskött is a group of approximately 30 beefproducers in the south of Sweden, who sell their products on the local market. They are certified with Svenskt Sigill, an organisation that works with animal welfare, environmental responsibility, safe food, open landscape and independent qualitycontrol. These producers have to fulfil certain demands regarding pasture and quality of the meat. For this essay I did a market investigation in which I wanted to find out what qualities the Swedish market and the consumers want in their beef. The purpose was to find out what Skånskt Naturbeteskött could do differently to satisfy the market for locally produced beef in the south of Sweden. In the investigation I turned to those responsible for the beef in 12 supermarkets, 4 selling Skånskt Naturbeteskött today, 4 that sold it before but quit, and 4 that never have sold it but might be interested in the future.

Multiple factors are involved in control of beef sensory quality so great variation can be induced. The perception of meat quality can be affected anywhere in the product chain. Both the environment and the set of genes of the animals have an effect on the final output. A problem facing the beef industry today is the significant variations in meat quality between individual animals, which is reflected in the uneven quality of the meat that reaches the consumer. If the quality of meat in stores varies significantly over time, the consumers? trust may decrease.

After a workshop in Kuopio held in June 2006, Interbull decided to go forward with the development of a system for beef international genetic evaluation and a three year project called Interbeef was launched in June 2007. The participating countries are so far limited to Europe and the only trait evaluated at present is adjusted weaning weight (weight at 200 days). The results from a first international genetic evaluation have been shared with the countries but are not yet official. The evaluation is based on data from purebred Charolais and Limousin. To achieve good estimates of proofs in an international context it is important that methods for data validation and model selection are implemented.

Neospora caninum is an intracellular parasite that was first recognized in dogs in 1984. The parasite is now one of the most commonly diagnosed infectious causes of abortion in cattle word wide. N. caninum is transmitted to cattle in two ways. They may be infected from eating food contaminated with oocysts from a definitive host or they may be infected in utero from an infected mother. The infection is transmitted efficiently from cow to her offspring and this can occur for generations.

The purpose of this literature study was to investigate the possibilities to improve longevity and stayability of beef cattle with breeding. The breeding goal for beef breeds is to produce animals with high capacity for growth and good feed efficiency. Longevity and sustainability are two important features to include in the breeding goal. If longevity is increased each cow can produce more calves and the number of female calves used for recruitment can be reduced and only the best heifers need to be selected for breeding. The benefits of longer life is that it lowers the costs of recruitment animals, it increases the number of young animals that become available for slaughter, and it increases the proportion of high producing animals in the herds.

The Swedish beef cattle population is growing when the dairy cattle become fewer. The fertility of the beef cows is important for the profitability in beef cattle production. Today there is no genetic evaluation for female fertility in Swedish beef cows. The purpose of this study was to see if calving interval can be used in the genetic evaluation as a measure of female fertility in beef cows. For this purpose the variation in calving interval for beef cows of different breeds and ages registred in KAP was studied.

The release of green house gases and the environmental impacts humans have on the environment are huge and might cause irreversible changes to our earth. Meat is considered to have large impacts on the environment, especially beef meat and therefore there have lately been considerable discussions on the sustainable level of meat consumption and production. The main goal with this thesis is to study sustainable meat production and meat consumption in the county of Dalarna in Sweden. Indicators for sustainable meat production and meat consumption were developed and applied on three cases. Interviews were carried out with a municipality in the region that represents the consumer and three beef farmers that represents the producers.

Many dairy farms doesn?t keep their bull calves and cross cow calves, they sell them to breeders instead of raising them their self. It should be possible for the dairy farmers to do it them self?s. There is also a possibility to bread one calf from the cross heifers. The purpose of the investigation was to see if there is any economic possibility to breed beef cattle. I have used the same sample farm trough the hole study, because it would be easier to fallow the study.