Pasture-finishing of cattle in Western U.S. rangelands improves markers of animal metabolic health and nutritional compounds in beef

• Published in: Scientific reports 2024-08, Vol.14 (1), p.20240-18, Article 20240
• Main Authors: Evans, Nikia, Cloward, Jennifer, Ward, Robert E., van Wietmarschen, Herman A., van Eekeren, Nick, Kronberg, Scott L., Provenza, Frederick D., van Vliet, Stephan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 631/443; 631/45/320; 704/158/2456; Animal Feed - analysis; Animal Husbandry - methods; Animal Nutritional Physiological Phenomena; Animals; Antibiotics; Beef; Beef cattle; Biomarkers; Cattle; Fatty acids; Fatty Acids - analysis; Fatty Acids - metabolism; Feedlots; Forbs; Glutathione; Grass-fed; Health promotion; Homocysteine; Humanities and Social Sciences; Inositol; Lipidomics - methods; Meat; Metabolism; Metabolites; Metabolomics; Metabolomics - methods; multidisciplinary; Nicotinamide; Nicotinic acid; Omega-3 fats; Omega-3 fatty acids; Oxidative stress; Pasture; Pasture-finished; Phenolic compounds; Phenols; Phytochemical; Pyridoxine; Rangelands; Red Meat - analysis; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); United States; Vitamin B6; Vitamin E; Vitamins
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-71073-3

As environmental and health concerns of beef production and consumption mount, there is growing interest in agroecological production methods, including finishing beef cattle on pastures with phytochemically diverse grasses, forbs, and/or shrubs. The goal of this metabolomics, lipidomics, and fatty acid methyl ester profiling study was to compare meat ( pectoralis profundus ) of Black Angus cattle from two commercial US beef finishing systems (pasture-finished on Western U.S. rangeland; n  = 18 and grain-finished in a Midwest U.S. feedlot; n  = 18). A total of 907 out of 1575 compounds differed in abundance between pasture-finished and grain-finished beef samples (all, false discovery rate adjusted P