Samenvatting

Over the last decades, the increased demand in beef by the growing population led to an industrialization and intensification of the production systems. This resulted in many issues such as environmental impact, animal welfare, consumers acceptability, resource-use efficiency, growing reliance on edible food. By the way, the European Union launched the SusCatt project to strengthen the sustainability of European beef and milk production by evaluating yields, quality, health and welfare, economics, reliance on edible food, gas emissions, environmental impact and consumers acceptability of a transition to high forage and pasture diets. In Sweden, more than 60% of the beef production originates from dairy cattle since the country is more known as a dairy producer. In another hand, it has been reported that the dairy beef production was environmentally and economically more efficient than suckler cattle beef production. However, the number of dairy cows is decreasing in Sweden since higher individual milk yields are achieved. This results in a lack of calves for beef production. By the way, producing more beef in the current situation led to a growing demand for beef breed semen to produce crossbred animals, expected to be more performant and give greater carcass characteristics. This study examines the advantages from crossing dairy cows with early maturing beef breed sires to produce young bulls in a forage-based diet.