Feeding cattle with sunflower and fish oil ‘can give health benefits’

GRASS-fed cattle offer consumers greater protection against cancer, diabetes and heart disease than those fed on concentrates, according to the latest research by Teagasc.

Scientists at UCD and Teagasc’s Ashtown and Grange research centres have found evidence to suggest that farmers can further enhance the health benefits of their beef by supplementing the diet of cattle with sunflower seed/oil, fish oil and vitamin E. This model of feed produces beef rich in conjugated linoleic acid (CLA).

The research findings, newly unveiled at a Teagasc workshop, could potentially prove a great international marketing tool for Irish beef, where the herd tends to be more pasture-fed than many of its concentrate-fed competitors.

As UCD’s professor Helen Roche explains: “Ireland has a predominantly pasture- based herd. That means the beef in Ireland contains higher levels of CLA than many other countries.

“We worked on this project with Teagasc’s Aidan Moloney, who has cattle in pasture. We fed CLA-enriched beef to a mouse model of diabetes and found that it had an anti-diabetic effect.

“The preliminary data was promising, and it may eventually be a matter of demonstrating its efficiency on a human.”

As well as diabetes, the study showed CLA-rich beef helps protect humans against certain factors associated with inflammatory ailments such as inflammatory bowel disease, sepsis and rheumatoid arthritis.