RDE 318 - Follow on study to Dual Purpose Cows - GHG Mitigation Rationale

At present we source about 50% of our Beef from dairy beef cross animals, and 50% from specialist suckler beef breeds. Precise statistics are not available, but information can be inferred from the Cattle Tracing System data. The Emissions Intensity of suckler beef is on average 70% higher than that of beef from the dairy herd due to longer maturation times and lower energy diets. Suckler Beef also requires around 2 to 6 times the land to produce than dairy beef, depending on the intensity of the finishing system. Efforts to increase the proportion of beef supplied from the dairy sector could therefore provide significant GHG reductions and alleviate land constraints for habitat creation, or greenhouse gas removal technologies such as afforestation.

Two scenarios present themselves:

1. Replacing specialist dairy breeds such as Holstein with a dual-purpose breed like Norwegian Red that produce less milk and more beef. Although emissions from milk production would go up slightly, this would be more than offset by the reduced overheads of maintaining two herds
2. Improving the quality of dairy/beef cross animals through improved beef sire quality could improve beef yields e.g., switching from Angus/Hereford to Charolais, or potentially double muscled varieties such as Belgian Blue.

This project was awarded by Defra.