Template talk:Beef

Placement

I'm concerned about the placement of this template in a large number of cattle breed articles. Those articles don't appear in the template, and the purpose of the template is navigation between related topics. If the (mostly stub) breed articles aren't high level topics such as beef and veal, then I think it's excessive. In some cases the template is longer than the article itself. Steven Walling 01:20, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Yep. That was me. I couldn't find the guidelines on where to put them. I added them to beef cattle articles because I thought they might be useful to visitors. I'll remove them if you like. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 02:54, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Since I'm the one who brought it up, I'll do the work of removing it, but I didn't want to without asking first. Steven Walling 03:28, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

I suggest holding on for a while. Others may want to comment. Plus, I can rollback, which is easier. They are little-edited articles, so most can be reverted that way. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 03:34, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

I guess I should explain my rationale for adding the navboxes. I asked myself the question: "Would a visitor to, say, Luing cattle, prefer to the navbox to be there, or would s/he wish it to not be there?" Anna Frodesiak (talk) 05:01, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree that's the right question to be asking. I just think that when it comes to that specific of a topic, the answer is probably not. For something like sirloin or beef cattle it's a big enhancement, but something like Luing cattle is not really a central subject in beef. A person showing up at the stub for a particular breed is just as likely to be interested in the geographical region and its culture as in beef overall. Not to mention that many beef breeds, such as the Chianina or Marchigiana, actually began primarily as oxen rather than beef producers. Steven Walling 05:57, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

I thought about it some more, and you're right. It's not doing any harm and might help some readers. You made a good call. Thanks, Steven Walling 18:07, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. I'm still not sure I'm right. I'm only one person. And if you ask my parents, you see that I'm always wrong. But, boy, is it ever rare to read what you've just written. My greatest respect for you. :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 23:29, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

More than five years on, I agree with Steven Walling's initial reaction. This template is not appropriate to, or particularly helpful to readers of, cattle breed articles. I see that a tiny handful of beef breeds have been added in the last few weeks. I'd like to suggest that this should stop (and I've WP:BOLDly removed them for that reason). There seem to be about 3200 recognised cattle breeds in the world. Even if (for the sake of argument) only 30% of those are raised for beef, that's still 1000 or so breeds. The idea of adding them all here is simply not practical, and the idea of adding only a tiny few is not really tenable, as the selection is inevitably subjective and potentially culturally biased (I note without recrimination that two of the most significant European "beef cattle" breeds, the Charolaise and the Chianina, were not among those I've just removed). I suggest that navigation between cattle breed articles is far better handled by templates such as {{British cattle}} (which I didn't have anything to do with) or {{Cattle breeds of France}} (which I did). The idea that cattle can be categorised into a single function is in any case arguably confined to a fairly small number of highly-specialised "industrial" breeds (some discussion of this in Felius 2011). Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:33, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Works for me. Until recently, the breeds were originally interspersed in the "Beef cattle" group, something I thought was rather messy, so I split them out. But since the list is so incomplete, and it would take a separate navbox just to properly contain them all, I agree that it's better to remove them altogether. Ibadibam (talk) 23:36, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

This template is still being used on those breed articles, nav templates should not be used in articles in which the article itself does not appear re MOS, someone should have removed the template from those articles, when the template was revised.--KTo288 (talk) 07:57, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

So, Ibadibam, KTo288, I've now gone ahead and removed this template from a good number of cattle breed articles. Questions: (1) did I niss any? (2) what do you think about the "Related meats" section? I don't see those as meat articles, but as species (or inter-species hybrid) pages, so I don't see that they have any place here. Thoughts? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:26, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

There appears to be a misunderstanding regarding beef cattle and the primary purpose of cattle breeds. Typically, if cattle aren't raised for dairy they are raised for beef production. The template itself is beef cattle. I noticed the template was removed from two articles about beef cattle. Why is there confusion? ^{Atsme📞📧} 23:26, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Template:Beef has always been about beef, the food product, not cattle. And there are so many breeds under Category:Beef cattle breeds that it would clutter the navbox to include them all. Ibadibam (talk) 00:45, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

The first line reads Beef cattle. I imagine editors will continue using the template for beef cattle articles until the template is corrected. Also want to mention that beef cattle articles provide information about the beef those cattle produce. ^{Atsme📞📧} 01:39, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Good point, Atsme! I've changed that as best I could. As for your idea that cattle are either for meat or for milk, I can't agree. Some of the uses I can think of off the top of my head are:

• Draught (the principal use of many, many breeds for most of their history)
• Dual-purpose (draught-meat, draught-milk, milk-meat)
• Triple-purpose
• Vegetation management (e.g., Albera)
• Bull-fighting (Brava)
• Course camarguaise (Raço di Biòu)
• Cow-fighting (Hérens)
• Idi probak and similar sports (Terreña)
• Tourist attraction (Raço di Biòu again)
• Cultural or national symbolism (Lidia)
• Heritage (Mishima)

I'm sure there are many more. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 10:40, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

And ping Anna Frodesiak, which I thought I had done with my first edit in this thread, but clearly failed to do. I'm sorry about that! Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 10:52, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

My apologies - I should have been more specific in that I was referring to "beef cattle" and "beef cattle breeds" not the entire bovinae family and their multiple purposes. 😁 My response was more of a spontaneous reaction from years of breeding/raising/showing/selling beef cattle, but now that you've explained the intent of the template and fixed the part some of us found confusing, I'm good to go. Thank you and HAPPY NEW YEAR!! ^{Atsme📞📧} 18:42, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. I'll let you all handle this. I'm sorry I left a bit of a mess. Best, :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 21:21, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Is there something akin to a List of cattle breeds? Or even a non-diffusing Cattle breeds category so someone looking for a complete list of what's on Wikipedia can find it in one place? While the "breeds by country" lists are useful in some cases, a breed might be placed in more than one nation's list, and people may find it a challenge to find a breed in general if they have to sort through a dozen "by country" lists. Montanabw^(talk) 21:59, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Yep, Montanabw, agree! There's List of cattle breeds which you linked to, and Category:Cattle breeds, which you didn't. The cattle breed infobox automatically adds articles to that general category, so there's less risk of it being removed by the over-zealous (I've made the horse breed infobox do the same thing, btw). Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:25, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

That's awesome. I'm wondering if "we" (i.e. someone else other than moi) should create a cattle navbox...— Preceding unsigned comment added by Montanabw (talk • contribs) 17:43, January 16, 2016 (UTC)

Maybe … but I don't really see it as a practical proposition (see my comments higher up on the number of cattle breeds). At the moment there seem to be about 365 breeds in Category:Cattle breeds, which probably is not quite as many as we have pages on. That would make a seriously unwieldy navbox, I think. Or do you mean a navbox for cattle-related topics such as dairy farming and hoof-trimming? That could perhaps be useful. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 14:09, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Will somebody please explain why Argentine beef and Kobe beef are listed on the template but not North American Piedmontese. This is very confusing to me. ^{Atsme📞📧} 17:28, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Atsme, I don't know about Argentine beef or if it should be here – what do you think? For what it's worth, here's my take on the other two: Kobe beef is a kind of beef, a sort of DOCG certification of a certain type of product from a specific strain of a specific cattle breed (the Tajima strain of Japanese Black), raised only within a specific area of one island in Japan. It might be compared to something like bistecca alla fiorentina (yes, I know that link doesn't lead to an article on the topic!) or (non-beef example) Poulet de Bresse. The North American Piedmontese is a cattle breed, not a kind of meat. At least, your article says it is; I'm a bit concerned that it isn't really listed anywhere as one – it's not reported to DAD-IS, it isn't in Mason, Google books hits are almost zero, many of the refs in the page are either to the North American Piedmontese Association (and so not independent), or are apparently about the Italian Piemontese breed. Ping Montanabw, not because of this but because I forgot to higher up. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:52, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Not sure why you would surmise that North American Piedmontese are not at the same level as Argentine beef cattle or Kobe beef considering the fact they are bred to produce a high quality, lean beef that is also tender. I'm not sure if any of them belong in your template, and may be where the confusion lies. Did you read the section on Genetics and crossbreeding wherein it states: Like the original Italian Piedmontese, North American Piedmontese cattle are distinguished genetically by the presence of the myostatin allele mutation which causes the breed's hypertrophic muscle growth, or "double muscling". Compared with normal breeds of beef cattle, North American Piedmontese cattle are more proficient in converting feed into lean muscle. They also produce a higher percentage of the most desirable cuts of meat. They average 20% more muscle with less bone and fat. Research indicates that there is less connective tissue within the muscle of "double-muscled" cattle; this would imply less background toughness and therefore more tender meat. ^{Atsme📞📧} 19:13, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

^{Just wanted to add that if you'll look through the RS citied in the article, PUBMED and science journals support the findings and were appropriately cited, along with the USDA. Those are the sources we value at WP as far as it pertains to genetics and claims made in an article. 19:26, 17 January 2017 (UTC)}

OK, two things: there is a difference between a cattle breed (a recognised population of four-legged ruminants with similar characteristics) and a beef product (a lump of meat in a shop or restaurant). Kobe beef belongs to the latter class, while breeds such as the Piemontese belong to the former; is that distinction not fairly obvious? Secondly, science journals are only useful as sources if they actually support the content. So this source, for example, cited in the page on North American Piedmontese cattle, has no relevance there because it makes no mention of that breed, and discusses only the Italian Piemontese breed and the Belgian Blue (which by the way was being selectively bred for myostatin deficiency some 20 years before the first import of Piedmontese cattle to North America – sorry, I don't recall the exact date offhand, but it's around 1960). I suggest moving this discussion to the talk page of the article if you want to pursue it further, because this surely isn't the place for it (my fault entirely). Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:20, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

If the discussion moves, if someone could link the article it moves to, that would be good. Here's my take: as usual, the definition of an animal "breed" becomes a case of "whack-a-mole" because there is no worldwide -- or even scientific -- consensus. The DAD-IS pretty much reports what various national Agriculture departments submit, and while it is evidence that a breed exists, it is quite incomplete as to evidence that a breed does not exist. And then there is the Kobe and Wagyu thing... nothing gets weirder than when a fad hits... Also some "breeds" are actually just a subset of bloodlines broken out for either marketing or nationalistic reasons (I suspect this of the Piedmontese), while others are "real" but hard to define landrace breeds that have little documentation. But anyway, perhaps Talk:Beef cattle might be a good talk page to continue this? Montanabw^(talk) 23:31, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

On that same topic, [this link] follows suit. I'm not here to create issues, rather I'm trying to resolve an issue that some editors have found to be confusing. ^{Atsme📞📧} 20:14, 18 January 2017 (UTC)