New breed of cattle
boasts leaner meat
1TWIN BRIDGES — A rancher
near this southwest Montana
town hopes his rare breed of cat
tle will appeal to the health-con
scious consumer.
While most Montana ranchers
raise Angus and Herefords, Dick
Gooby has been raising Piedmon
tese cattle since 1991. And so far,
the investmenUias paid off.
“Everyone is willing to pay a
premium for them,” said Gooby,
who recently got 12 percent over
market prices for a truckload of
Piedmontese crossed with Angus.
“We’ve received calls from sever
al feeders and packers looking to
buy more.”
What makes the Piedmontese
so special?
A 3.5-ounce portion of Pied
montese beef generally has just
32.1 milligrams of cholesterol,
less than half the 74 milligrams
found in select beef or the 70 mil
ligrams in a similar portion of
skinless chicken. Even Piedmon
tese crossbreeds generally register
between 38.6 and 62 milligrams
of cholesterol.
Gooby said Piedmontese are
lower in cholesterol because of an
unusual characteristic called dou
ble-muscling, which makes for
leaner meat.
And while more muscle and
less fat usually make the meat less
tender, that’s not the case with
Piedmontese, said Harlan Ritchie,
animal science program leader for
Michigan State University Exten
sion.
“We all know that the beef mar
ket is changing and cattle breed
ers are trying to raise beef to meet
the demands of that market,”
Gooby said. “That’s what attract
ed us to the Piedmontese.”
Piedmontese are relatively new
in the United States, with just
5,000 registered nationwide, and
Gooby said most ranchers cross
Piedmontese with other breeds of
cattle.
Originally from the Piedmont
valley of Italy, the breed was im
r
ported into Canada in 1983 and
first made its way into the United
States about three years later.
Study shows breast-fed
babies are smarter
Z CHICAGO — A new study sug
gests that youngsters who were
breast-fed as babies do better in
school and score higher on stan
dardized math and reading tests.
The study, which tracked more
than 1,000 New Zealand children
through age 18, bolsters evidence
that breast-feeding helps make
smarter kids. It appears in Janu
ary’s Pediatrics, the journal of the
suburban Chicago-based Ameri
can Academy of Pediatrics.
The authors, Professors David
M. Fergusson and L. John Hor
wood of Christchurch School of
Medicine, subscribe to the theory
that fatty acids that are present in
breast milk but not in formula
promote lasting brain develop
ment.
The breast-fed children in the
study tended to have mothers
who were older, better-educated
and wealthier. Skeptics say those
factors rather than the breast milk
itself could explain the findings.
But the authors wrote that they
adjusted for those factors and still
concluded: “There were small but
consistent tendencies for increas
ing duration of breast-feeding to
be associated with increased IQ,
increased performance on stan
dardized tests, higher teacher rat
ings of classroom performance
and better high school achieve
ment.”
Those who were breast-fed for
less than four months scored
slightly higher from ages 8 to 13
on standardized tests. The differ
ences increased the longer chil
dren breast-fed.
The American Academy of Pe
diatrics just last month urged
mothers to nurse longer — for at
least one year, instead of the rec
ommended six months — for nu
merous reasons, including the
presumed mental benefits.
Irish military groups
debate return to war
3 BELFAST, Northern Ireland —
Accused of random killings de
spite a cease-fire, the comman
ders of Northern Ireland's largest
pro-British paramilitary group ad
mitted Monday they are debating
“a return to war.”
The declaration came as rising
violence threatened stalled peace
talks on Northern Ireland’s politi
cal future.
At Monday’s funeral for the
latest victim, Roman Catholic
Bishop Patrick Walsh appealed
for an end to the political jockey
ing.
“Do not dispirit us with any
further petty shows of rancor, bit
terness, ill temper. There is so
much at stake — lives are at
stake,” Walsh implored at the fu
neral for Eddie Treanor.
Treanor, 31, was shot to death
by two masked gunmen as he sat
beside his girlfriend in a north
Belfast pub on New Year’s Eve.
Five other Catholics were
wounded in the attack claimed
by a renegade gang opposed to
the peace talks, the Loyalist Vol
unteer Force — but blamed in
many quarters on the Ulster De
fense Association, a party to the
talks.
The Loyalist Volunteers, who
also killed a Catholic at a rural
hotel last week, said they were
punishing Northern Ireland’s mi
nority Catholics for the Dec. 27
assassination of its founder, Billy
“King Rat” Wright.
An IRA splinter gang opposed
to the talks, the Irish National
Liberation Army, killed Wright
inside the high-security Maze
prison.
Treanor’s funeral came amid
intense political activity in
Belfast and London aimed at
keeping as many parties as possi
ble involved in the negotiations
on Northern Ireland’s future.
They are supposed to resume Jan.
12 and conclude by May.
— Compiled from AP wire reports
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