(Press-News.org) The package on a supermarket steak may say "grass-fed" or "grass-finished," but how can a consumer know whether the cow spent its days grazing peacefully on meadow grass or actually gorged on feedlot corn? In ACS's Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, scientists are now reporting the development of a method that can reconstruct the dietary history of cattle and authenticate the origins of beef.
Frank J. Monahan and colleagues note that consumers are increasingly concerned about the origins and labeling of meat, as they seek assurance about the meat's safety or prepare to pay premium prices for specialty meats that are raised locally or certified as organic. "An example of such a product is pasture-fed beef," they write, "often marketed as superior nutritionally as a result of increased levels of omega-3 fatty acids...arising from the consumption of grass."
To reconstruct the diet of cattle, the researchers analyzed the proportions of different types of oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and sulfur in the animals' muscle tissue and tail hair. Specific diets (for instance, a diet that switched from mostly grass to corn at the end of the cow's life) leave a distinctive "fingerprint" of these elements in cattle tissue. The fingerprint in muscle represents the animal's overall lifetime diet, while quicker-growing tissue in tail hair can reveal more recent dietary changes. Monahan and colleagues say the fingerprints "provide a powerful tool to reconstruct changes in feed components offered to animals over periods of over a year and thus a tool to verify farm production practices."
###
The authors acknowledge funding from the Irish Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.
Following your steak's history from pasture to plate
2011-05-11
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Foster Care Associates Receives Leading Aspect Award
2011-05-11
Foster Care Associates (FCA) has received the Leading Aspect Award for empowering staff and foster carers to drive up educational standards for looked after children and young people.
The Leading Aspect Award is a self-evaluation framework designed to judge the support of educational welfare within an organisation. FCA has received positive results based on criteria such as commitment to quality, teaching and learning, sharing good practice, and disseminating innovation.
The agency has proved particularly successful in empowering foster carers and staff to narrow ...
The '$1,000 genome' may cost $100,000 to understand
2011-05-11
Advances in technology have almost lifted the curtain on the long-awaited era of the "$1,000 genome" — a time when all the genes that make up a person can be deciphered for about that amount – compared to nearly $1 million a few years ago. But an article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), ACS' weekly newsmagazine, raises the disconcerting prospect that a price tag of $100,000, by one conservative estimate, is necessary to analyze that genetic data so it can be used in personalized medicine – custom designing treatments that fit the patient's genetic ...
A direct connection between business rates and local economy has no foundation in reality
2011-05-11
London, UK (May 11th, 2011) - In 1988 Margaret Thatcher took control of business rates away from local councils and in 2011 Eric Pickles wants to give it back to them. In his article, What do business rates measure? published by SAGE, Dominic Williams carries out research into the link between business rates and the local economy.
Within this article Williams looks at the consequences should this change go ahead and what this would mean for poorer councils. He also explores supporters' views that this would give councils an incentive to promote growth in their local ...
Alkaviva Water Ionizers Presents the AlkaViva 9 - a Top Performing 9 Plate Water Ionizer Using the Latest Technology
2011-05-11
Alkaviva Water Ionizers has being a leading name in water ionization for over 5 years and enjoys an A+ ranking from the Better Business Bureau. AlkaViva offers the best quality water ionization products at honest prices and with unmatched after sales service.
The AlkaViva 9 is the latest addition to AlkaViva's extensive lineup of water ionizers and comes with a 60 day money back satisfaction guarantee.
What makes the AlkaViva 9 stand out from other water ionizers is it's low price even though it is made to outperform models more than twice the cost. Unlike Chinese ...
Botox injected in head 'trigger point' is proven to reduce migraine crises
2011-05-11
This release is available in French and Spanish.
Scientists at the University of Granada have confirmed that injecting a local anesthetic or botulinum toxin (botox) into certain points named "trigger points" of the pericraneal and neck muscles reduce migraine frequency among migraine sufferers. University of Granada researchers have identified the location of these trigger points –which activation results in migraine– and their relationship with the duration and severity of this condition.
Headache is a universal experience. At present, there are more than 100 different ...
'Liquid smoke' from rice shows potential health benefits
2011-05-11
Liquid smoke flavoring made from hickory and other wood — a mainstay flavoring and anti-bacterial agent for the prepared food industry and home kitchens — may get a competitor that seems to be packed with antioxidant, antiallergenic and anti-inflammatory substances, according to a new study in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. It is the first analysis of liquid smoke produced from rice hulls, the hard, inedible coverings of rice grains.
Mendel Friedman, Seok Hyun Nam and colleagues explain that wood from trees is typically used to produce liquid smoke, ...
Mayo Clinic reports new findings on noninvasive test for pancreatic cancer
2011-05-11
ROCHESTER, Minn. - Pancreatic cancer has one of the highest mortality rates of any of the major cancers, and of the 43,000-plus Americans diagnosed with the disease each year, more than 94 percent die within five years of diagnosis. One reason for this high number of deaths is a lack of effective screening tools for catching the disease early. Now, in an effort to try to gain the upper hand on this deadly form of cancer, Mayo Clinic researchers believe they have found a new way to test for pancreatic cancer with DNA testing of patients' stool samples. The research was presented ...
OwnDepot Inc. Launches OwnDepot.com, a Destination Website for Homeowners to Manage the Well Being of Their Homes.
2011-05-11
Doug Huggins Founder of OwnDepot announced today that the company website, www.owndepot.com has officially launched. The Site provides the insured community with a secure inventory solution that allows the customer or a designated agent to inventory all home valuables. OwnDepot provides proof of ownership by recording detailed purchase information, while providing customers with tools to help them manage their home life.
OwnDepot has created a new market category - a Home Management Solution that focuses on personal asset management and household simplification. It ...
Serendipity leads to lifesaving discovery
2011-05-11
About two years ago, Dr. Philippe Gros, a McGill University professor in the Department of Biochemistry and a Principal Investigator in thd McGill Life Sciences Complex, described a mouse mutant that was immunodeficient and hypersensitive to the Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine and to tuberculosis (TB). In this model, Gros's team had found that the immunodeficiency was caused by a mutation in a regulatory protein of the immune system named IRF8.
A year later, a physician in Newcastle who had heard about Gros's work, contacted him about a three-month-old patient ...
Lessening the dangers of radiation
2011-05-11
For diagnosing head and neck ailments, tests that use radiation are always less desirable than those that don't. Otolaryngologists have a wide range of techniques available to them, including CT or "CAT" scans, MRI and ultrasound. CT uses significant radiation and MRI a lower amount, but ultrasound is a non-invasive, non-radiating technique. It does not require injection of radioactive contrast material and has no side effects.
Now, a new study by Tel Aviv University exploring the efficacy of expensive and invasive CT scans has found that, in some cases, they don't offer ...