The challenge of quality

The great change in our Society is that the fanning and agri-food sectors are faced with a general saturation of food markets in Europe and with an increasing demand by consumers for high-quality products. The major current questions are thus how to define quality, and how to increase the quality of animal products to satisfy the new consumer requirements. To achieve the above objectives, the producers and sellers of animal products now need indicators for quality. This is the reason why the Cattle Commission of the European Association for Animal Production (EAAP) had a specific session on this topic in its Annual Meeting, held in Bled (Slovenia) in September 2004. All the review papers and the short communications presented in this session are in this EAAP publication entitled "Indicators of milk and beef quality". Additional papers from invited authors were written in 2004 and then added to complete the publication although not all topics related to quality indicators are covered in the present publication. Review papers aim to describe the state of the art in different disciplines including genetics, physiology, nutrition, biochemistry as well as social and economic aspects. Short communications are recent and new results given as examples of the research done in these different areas. All the papers were peer-reviewed by international experts. This introduction to our EAAP publication aims to remind readers of the history of Cattle in the World, the milk and beef production features in the European Union, and finally the definition of quality for food products and especially for beef, milk and cheese. Parts of this Introduction are based on previous discussions during the EAAP Round Tables, which were held over the last three years during EAAP meetings.