Current situation

The breeding of beef cattle in Greece is mainly based on the importation of young calves from abroad and their fattening in farms specialized for this purpose. Imported animals have a high growth rate, a high feed conversion ratio and produce carcasses with a high classification index based on the European Carcase Quality Classification System (SEUROP).

However, their rearing is economically precarious due to the low selling price of the meat and intense competition from imported meat, combined with high production costs largely related to nutrition. So, the sustainability of the system and the farms is inextricably linked to the producer price of the meat produced, but also to the reduction of production costs. However, a key problem is the commonness of the produced meat and the lack of research data on breeding methods and especially nutritional interventions that could confer organoleptic advantages to the produced meat.

Addressing the problem

It is proposed to develop and implement in the breeding of the Omega Farms Group of Producers, special rations and innovative nutritional supplements for feeding calves, at various stages of their fattening, so that it becomes possible to predict the quality of the meat produced, based on a management and nutritional standard that will be developed and implemented during project implementation, leveraging existing know-how.

In addition, the repeatability of the pattern using innovative nutritional supplements under different rearing conditions will be tested. For the development of nutritional supplements, aromatic plants and by-products of agricultural holdings, which are abundant in the wider area and remain unused (e.g. stem cells-residues of winemaking, juice-making residues), products of special processing of flaxseed and special mineral rocks produced in the Greece and previous researches have proven their specificities as additives in ruminant nutrition.

The quality characteristics of the meat will be evaluated by classic methods (Ph/color/tenderness assessment, taste tests by trained testers, etc.), and by tests to detect microbiological and physicochemical changes at defined time intervals. Finally, market research will assess consumers’ willingness to pay for an organoleptically superior, certified meat, competitive with the corresponding imported ones.