Effects of crossing of domestic breed with beef breeds on the quality of meat in PR China and Republic of Serbia

This paper presents the results of crossing Domestic Spotted breed with beef cattle breeds in the People's Republic of China and the Republic of Serbia. China is a big country of beef production and consumption. In 2012, beef production in China was 5,540,000 tons, which accounted for 9.7% of the global beef production, ranking the third in the world. The main sources of China’s beef are from crossbreeding cattle (native breed crossbred with foreign beef cattle). Simmental cattle are the most-widely used beef cattle in China’s improved beef cattle. China has cultivated its own Simmental after over 40 years’ crossbreeding and improvement. China’s consumers mainly have three demands for beef quality as follows: expensive beef produced from Wagyu crossbreed with better marbling; lean beef from Simmental, Charolais and Limousin crossbreeds, top parts supplied to hotels while common parts to supermarkets; veal from cow calves. Chinese researchers are carrying out researches which are centered on marbling beef, lean beef and veal on complete techniques of good breed, feeding management, slaughter and cutting and carcass classification. At present, researchers have lively interest in functional genomics of meat quality traits of cattle, they expect to use these methods to study meat quality traits and then improve the meat quality. Improved cattle breeds universally utilized in China are mainly Simmental followed by Charolais, Limousin, Wagyu and Angus. Other three cattle breeds including Belgian blue cattle, Piedmontese and Gelbvien have ever been applied, however, rarely used in present beef cattle production. Republic of Serbia has in the future to quickly and efficiently provide adequate quantities of top quality meat. One of the ways to increase the yield and quality of the meat is crossing of Domestic spotted cattle of lower production traits with French beef cattle breeds. Beef production in the EU is adapted to the consumer taste. Meat must have a light red colour, equally suffused with fat and with pronounced sensory characteristics such as tenderness, juiciness, flavour and aroma. The results on the quality of meat of F1 generation crosses (Domestic Spotted breed with French beef cattle breeds Charolais and Limousine) indicate that by industrial crossing beef, meat-packing and organoleptic characteristics of meat can be improved.