Abstract
Beef cattle farming is an environmentally friendly food-producing animal husbandry sector that is based largely on pasture and arable by-product feedstuffs. It faces several problems that need to be addressed from a sustainability point of view. Population growth and growing food demand raise concerns about the environmental consequences of expanding beef production using current systems. Consequently, this condition underscores the importance of maintaining an equilibrium between these sustainability pillars and the necessity of adopting more sustainable models. This review article analyzes the most important, recent literary sources dealing with the sustainability of the sector. As a result of the literary synthesis, it has been established that most experts emphasize the two main pillars of sustainability, namely, economic and environmental aspects. The present work directs attention to the third and possible fourth point, the social as well as the cultural aspects of the sustainability of the beef cattle sector, which will be increasingly important to keep in mind in the future.
