Should the South African red meat classification system be revised or maintained? A review

The objective of this review was to determine whether the current South African red meat classification system still needs to be revised and changed or maintained. It also gives insight into the most significant challenges related to meat quality evaluation in this system. Red Meat Research and Development South Africa (RMRD SA) was requested to lead an investigation into the relevance of the current South African red meat classification system. A final decision was made to maintain the system as it was in 2016. Nonetheless, it is still unclear whether consumers buy meat according to the standards set by the system, since it is mostly understood and practised efficiently by middlemen, especially abattoir operators. The general perception that this system is not quality based, but descriptive, has resulted in seeming non-transparency among some red meat industry stakeholders. Although the red meat industry is emphasizing that a quality assurance system remains too expensive to be implemented in South Africa and that the current system should be sustained, there is still room for revising it. All predictions in this review indicate that the present system cannot satisfy all the needs of the current consumer. The system seems to be inclined towards meat traders, since it is value based and may not reflect the expectations and needs of consumers in terms of meat quality. This paper therefore concluded that the South African red meat classification system still needs to be revised and more research should be done for it to become more effective.Keywords: Assurance system, consumer needs, meat quality, meat traders, red meat industr

Students' conceptualizations of student hunger

Student hunger and food-related challenges are a pressing issue for higher education institutions in South Africa and has a negative effect on academic success and overall student well-being. While recent studies focusing on student hunger have explored its prevalence and contributing factors quantitatively, little is known about students’ own views of the problem experienced by them and more specifically, about the ways in which students define or conceptualise hunger. This article about students’ conceptualisations of student hunger can aid institutions of higher education and other role players to plan interventions that are relevant and sustainable. Photovoice was employed with a group of students from one institution of higher education in South Africa. The students who volunteered to participate were from different study fields. From the collaborative data analysis process, two concepts emerged: hunger of the stomach and hunger of the mind. This finding highlights the complexity of addressing student hunger in ways that are comprehensive and sustainable

Constraints to the sustainability of a ‘systematised’ approach to livestock marketing amongst smallholder cattle producers in South Africa

Commercialization of smallholder agriculture in South Africa is underpinned by reforms to improve livestock off-take in communal areas and engage smallholder farmers with formal markets. To achieve this, Custom Feeding Programmes (CFPs) were established to improve the condition of communal cattle prior to their sale into formal markets and to ‘systematise’ the informal marketing of cattle in communal areas by enabling participants to achieve higher informal market prices. We evaluate the sustainability of eight CFPs located in Eastern Cape Province in terms of their ability to add value to smallholder cattle production and encourage market participation. Communities with CFPs achieved a 16.6% mean cattle off-take rate, substantially higher than in most communal systems. Furthermore, cattle sold through CFPs attained a 17% higher mean selling price than those sold through other marketing channels. However, these benefits were mainly realized by better-off farmers with larger cattle herds and greater ability to transport animals to and from CFPs. More marginalized farmers, particularly women, had low participation. CFPs also face challenges to their sustainability, including inconsistent feed and water supplies, poor infrastructure and high staff turnover. Key to enhancing participation in CFPs, will be improving the way they are supported and embedded within communities

Unpacking the ‘Emergent Farmer’ Concept in Agrarian Reform:Evidence from Livestock Farmers in South Africa

South Africa has historically perpetuated a dual system of freehold commercial and communal subsistence farming. To bridge these extremes, agrarian reform policies have encouraged the creation of a class of ‘emergent’, commercially oriented farmers. However, these policies consider ‘emergent’ farmers as a homogeneous group of land reform beneficiaries, with limited appreciation of the class differences between them, and do little to support the rise of a ‘middle’ group of producers able to bridge that gap. This article uses a case study of livestock farmers in Eastern Cape Province to critique the ‘emergent farmer’ concept. The authors identify three broad categories of farmers within the emergent livestock sector: a large group who, despite having accessed private farms, remain effectively subsistence farmers; a smaller group of small/medium-scale commercial producers who have communal farming origins and most closely approximate to ‘emergent’ farmers; and an elite group of large-scale, fully commercialized farmers, whose emergence has been facilitated primarily by access to capital and a desire to invest in alternative business ventures. On this basis the authors suggest that current agrarian reform policies need considerable refocusing if they are to effectively facilitate the emergence of a ‘middle’ group of smallholder commercial farmers from communal systems

Adaptation and Mal-Adaptation to Ambient Hypoxia; Andean, Ethiopian and Himalayan Patterns

The study of the biology of evolution has been confined to laboratories and model organisms. However, controlled laboratory conditions are unlikely to model variations in environments that influence selection in wild populations. Thus, the study of “fitness” for survival and the genetics that influence this are best carried out in the field and in matching environments

Thickness dependence of irreversibility field in Bi-2212 thin films

The irreversibility field along the c-axis was measured for four Bi-2212 thin films and two Bi-2212 single crystals with different thicknesses. The irreversibility field at the same reduced temperature decreased as the thickness decreased. This result suggests that flux lines are fairly strongly coupled along their length over the distance longer than the film thickness investigated here even in two-dimensional superconductor. The thickness dependence is theoretically explained by the flux creep-flow model. From a difference of critical current property between thin films and single crystals, a critical thickness was found for the dimensional crossover of flux lines

Possible cross-species transmission of circoviruses and cycloviruses among farm animals

Circoviruses consist of highly prevalent and genetically diverse porcine and avian pathogens. The genomes of cycloviruses, a proposed new genus in the family Circoviridae, were recently identified in human and chimpanzee faeces. Here, six cyclovirus and four circovirus genomes from the tissues of chickens, goats, cows, and a bat were amplified and sequenced using rolling-circle amplification and inverse PCR. A goat cyclovirus was nearly identical to a cyclovirus from a cow. USA beef contained circoviruses with >99 % similarity to porcine circovirus 2b. Circoviruses in chicken were related to those of pigeons. The close genetic similarity of a subset of cycloviruses and circoviruses replicating in distinct animal species may reflect recent cross-species transmissions. Further studies will be required to determine the impact of these highly prevalent infections on the health of farm animals