Abstract
Based on the 2016 National Cattlemen's Beef Association statistics, the cattle inventory in the US reached 93.5 million head, from which 30.5 million were commercial slaughter in 2016. California ranked fourth among all the US states that raise cattle and calves, with 5.15 million head and approximately 1.18 million slaughtered animals per year. Approximately 0.5% of cattle carcasses in the US are condemned each year, which has an important economic impact on cattle producers.In this study, we first described and compared the temporal trends of cattle carcass condemnations in all the US states from Jan-2005 to Dec-2014. Then, we focused on the condemnation reasons with a seasonal component in California and used dynamic harmonic regression (DHR) models both to model (from Jan-2005 to Dec-2011) and predict (from Jan-2012 to Dec-2014) the carcass condemnations rate in different time horizons (3 to 12 months).Data consisted of daily reports of 35 condemnation reasons per cattle type reported in 684 federally inspected slaughterhouses in the US from Jan-2005 to Dec-2014 and the monthly slaughtered animals per cattle type per states. Almost 1.5 million carcasses were condemned in the US during the 10 year study period (Jan 2005-Dec 2014), and around 40% were associated with three condemnation reasons: malignant lymphoma, septicemia and pneumonia. In California, emaciation, eosinophilic myositis and malignant lymphoma were the only condemnation reasons presenting seasonality and, therefore, the only ones selected to be modeled using DHRs. The DHR models for Jan-2005 to Dec-2011 were able to correctly model the dynamics of the emaciation, malignant lymphoma and eosinophilic myositis condemnation rates with coefficient of determination () of 0.98, 0.87 and 0.78, respectively. The DHR models for Jan-2012 to Dec-2014 were able to predict the rate of condemned carcasses 3 month ahead of time with mean relative prediction error of 33, 11, and 38%, respectively. The systematic analysis of carcass condemnations and slaughter data in a more real-time fashion could be used to identify changes in carcass condemnation trends and more timely support the implementation of prevention and mitigation strategies that reduce the number of carcass condemnations in the US.
Highlights
The meat industry is the largest segment of US agriculture based on economic land use and environmental impact
Data on cattle condemnation reasons were obtained with the Freedom of Information Act from the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the agency responsible for slaughter conditions and meat inspection
Data consisted of daily reports of condemned carcasses per cattle type and condemnation reasons reported in 684 federally inspected slaughterhouses in US from Jan-2005 to Dec-2014, including 29 slaughterhouses located in California
Summary
The meat industry is the largest segment of US agriculture based on economic land use and environmental impact. The systematic analysis of slaughter data can help identify the most important condemnation reasons, characterize seasonality and emerging spatio-temporal trends, and provide the foundations of syndromic surveillance systems and early-detection of outbreaks. Studies by Kaneene et al [6] and Humphrey et al [7] used US slaughterhouse data to trace cattle to the herd of origin after detection and confirmation of bovine tuberculosis. Their main concern was the failure to trace back some bovine tuberculosis-positive animals. Other studies have shown the value of using slaughter data for example to early detect erysipelas outbreaks in the US swine industry [8] or predict increases in transport losses of swine in-transit and just prior to slaughter [9]
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