Change in moderation

SIR, – I found John Elliot’s comments on beef quality and the letter follow up interesting as a Scot who has been living in Canada for 16 years now. 
In North America, essentially all the beef is finished in a feedlot on a high percentage grain ration – corn (maize) in the USA and barley in western Canada. 
These feedlots are large scale, very sophisticated fatteners of cattle which results in tremendous uniformity in the final product. Their product has good consistency, but is bland and generally tasteless in my opinion. 
I don’t eat it as besides the growth hormone usage, it has almost certainly been fed low level antibiotics and beta-antagonists like Ractopamine which has been long banned in Europe. 
Consumer concern over these issues has fuelled considerable demand for grass-fed beef over the last 15 years. The growing number of health conscious consumers have also discovered the positive benefits of grass produced fats _ the Omega3 and CLA content. 
For more than a decade we have been direct marketing grass-fed beef from our traditional type Luing cattle to customers who declare it’s the best beef they have ever tasted. We are also finding a ready market for our genetics as there are hardly any cattle left on this continent with the ability to fatten on grass alone. 
I remember eating a lot of disappointing restaurant steaks in Scotland, but there were some good ones too. I feel the biggest problem with Scottish beef was lack of consistency. 
Looking back to the live fat cattle going through the ring in Scotland, it is no wonder the product was inconsistent compared to over here. 
A threequarter Limousin animal might be followed by a Galloway and then an Angus x Holstein. Genetics aside, there was often a wide variation in age and finish as well as diets ranging from summer lowland pasture, hill grazing, silage in winter to indoor cattle fattened on grain rations. 
We found the butcher’s shop beef in Castle Douglas very good and never bought the super lean product that was sold in the supermarkets. I always thought that type of product was more the taste of the continental European consumer and those convinced that fat was a dirty word. 
In my experience very lean genetics result in nervous, flighty animals and generally tougher meat in cattle, pigs and poultry. 
I understand Canada’s grading system changed in 1972 to eliminate excessive fat in carcases. By 1992, the pendulum had swung too far the other way and the system was changed again to re-introduce emphasis on marbling. 
There are rumblings now that a further change is needed as today’s carcases are fatter and have a lower lean content than at any time since the early 1970s. 
Hopefully, there is a lesson there for Scotland – change your grading systems and cattle types if needed, but do it in moderation so you aren’t at the opposite end of the spectrum 20 years from now!