ABSTRACT
Culling is the departure of cows from the herd because of sale, slaughter, salvage or death (Fetrow et al., 2005). The proportion of cows that are culled from dairy herds annually is variable (25-30%), and depends on biological factors such as age, parity, milk yield, reproductive and sanitary state of the cows, and also on economic factors such as the price of milk, of cows and replacement heifers (Bascom and Young, 1998). Most of the culled cows will be either sold through livestock markets and livestock dealers or sent directly to slaughterhouses. According to the studies of González et al. (2012a,b,c) in cattle submitted to long haul in North America, for all loads of different categories surveyed, culled cattle represented only 0.9%. In Chile, Gallo et al. (1999) registered the different categories of cattle arriving at several Chilean slaughterhouses, finding that adult and old cows represented around 15% of all cattle slaughtered; most of these cows were actually slaughtered at the smallest, and not exporting, meat plants. Another survey in Chile described 413 transport loads arriving at slaughterhouses and showed that 9.4% of them were culled cows (Gallo et al., 2005). Clearly, the number of culled cows slaughtered yearly in each country is variable and will depend mostly on economic factors, but their proportion with regard to the total of all cattle categories slaughtered is rather low. However, the sale of market cows and bulls accounts for 25% of all U.S. beef consumption (U.S., 2007). Culled cows are part of the food supply chain and should be
treated accordingly to provide meat that is acceptable from a meat safety and quality point of view, as well as from an ethical point of view that considers animal welfare. Good handling during transport and slaughter aims to achieve that.
