There is usually scant common ground between cattle farming and the Austin Powers series of James Bond spoofs.
One project in Scotland is bridging the divide, however, by thawing biological matter kept in liquid nitrogen since the 1960s to save a species from extinction.
While Austin Powers fought to save mankind, farmers based in Angus are reviving the fortunes of purebred Aberdeen Angus cows by creating a herd using sperm frozen more than 50 years ago.
Aberdeen Angus steak is widespread but it comes from cows that have been crossbred with American breeds. Cattle with a pure bloodline that can be traced back more than 150 years are considered “at risk”.
Geordie and Julia Soutar have been running a worldwide genetics project from their rural farm in Forfar, Angus, for 26 years and now have a herd of 50, including a bull named Boris after the prime minister.
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“We began to look at the original cattle, the native Angus with no imported genetics in the mid-1990s,” Mr Soutar said. “There were only around 20 cows left that had no imported bloodlines in them.
“Mostly they were old and mostly they were in calf to North American bulls, so we started to gather them up and sourced some old semen. To this day, we will still use semen that was collected in the 1960s. It’s frozen and stored in liquid nitrogen.”
He said that the sperm had lost some of its fertility but was good enough to produce calves and widen the genetic pool.
“Some of the early stuff I bought and as time went on we got some from the Rare Breeds Farm because they had a library of old semen. It is the same as a person getting IVF. You’re messing a wee bitty with nature to create the result you want.”
The process started with impregnating the few remaining pure native Aberdeen Angus cows with frozen sperm, a process known as selective breeding, resulting in a registered herd called the Dunlouise.
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They named one bull born last year Dunlouise Champion Boris, inspired by stories about Boris Johnson having an unknown number of children. “We’re not sure if he’ll sire more progeny than the other Boris,” Mr Soutar said.
Their bulls’ semen is carefully packaged and sent to farmers in Colombia, Uruguay and Argentina.
“It’s not a nine-to-five [job]. There are different time zones in some of the places we deal with so we’ve had to educate some of the people we deal with not to phone us at 2am to talk about cows,” he added.
Native Aberdeen Angus are fed on grass rather than the grain diets given to other breeds, resulting in a higher concentration of healthy fats such as omega 3 and with additional health benefits for the consumer and the environment.
“There is no doubt people are more conscious as to what they eat and so the quality is very important. This is the reason for farm shops: they have the provenance and the story to tell and people want to know these things,” Mr Souter said.
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“Meat is an essential part of our diet and you need to make sure you’re eating good beef. These cattle have stayed the test of time.”
The beef is not yet for sale but the Souters hope that it will be available through MacDuff Butchers in Edinburgh in the coming months.