After nearly a decade of relying on weight-gain feed additives as a lifeline to survival, some of the 75,000 U.S. cattle feedyards that dot rural America in places such as Texas and the Great Plains, suddenly must do without the leading product Zilmax – nicknamed "Vitamin Z."
Merck & Co's announcement on Friday that it was suspending the sale of Zilmax in the United States and Canada surprised many cattle owners and feedlot operators, who say Zilmax and other beta-agonists have been a godsend for a struggling U.S. beef industry that saw overall domestic consumption fall more than 8 percent between 2002 and 2011.
"Sometimes it's the difference from breakeven, or even loss, and profit," said Jhones Sarturi, an assistant professor of beef cattle nutrition at Texas Tech University.
The feedyard business may seem simple to outsiders – roughly double the weight of young cattle to around 1,300 pounds with a few months of feeding, then send them to slaughter – but its economics have become brutal, and the number of feedlots has shrunk by one-fifth over the last decade.
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