Emergent Research Themes on Sustainability in the Beef Cattle Industry in Brazil: An Integrative Literature Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript is of interest but its drafting needs improvement. Please review Instructions for Authors!!

1. Abstract is too long.

2. 131 - The title of the table or pictures must align with the writing in the text.

3. 192- Figure 1 - aligned....

4. 222 , 243, 260, 269, 281, 325, 378

5. 340-341; 529-568. rearrange text and figures to fit on the page.

6. 567 - the text of figure 4 ?????

7. 707-709 - that line is repeated. 

8. references are not written according to instructions... 

Author 1, A.B.; Author 2, C.D. Title of the article. Abbreviated Journal Name Year, Volume, page range.

9. for a review there are not enough references, minimum 80-90. 

•  

Author Response

We want to thank you for your valuable and thoughtful comments. We followed all of them accordingly.

 

1. Abstract is too long.

AR: Thank you for your comment. According to it, we shortened the abstract – it now accounts for exactly 200 words, according to Instructions for Authors.

 

2. 131 - The title of the table or pictures must align with the writing in the text.
3. 192- Figure 1 - aligned.....
4. 222 , 243, 260, 269, 281, 325, 378.
5. 340-341; 529-568. rearrange text and figures to fit on the page.
6. 567 - the text of figure 4 ?????.

AR: Thank you for your comments. According to them, we modified the titles of the tables and figures to align with the writing and rearranged the text and figures to fit on the page.

 

7. 707-709 - that line is repeated.

AR: Thank you for your comment. Accordingly, we deleted the spare line.

 

8. references are not written according to instructions...

Author 1, A.B.; Author 2, C.D. Title of the article. Abbreviated Journal Name Year, Volume, page range.

AR: Thank you for your comment. According to it, we unified all references according to Instructions for Authors.

 

9. for a review there are not enough references, minimum 80-90.

AR: Thank you for your comment. We expanded the references accordingly to your suggestion (89 references). However, we want to point out that there are other reviews in Sustainability, providing even lower number of references than our review, e.g. 50 references in Chifor, C.; Arion, I.D.; Isarie, V.I.; Arion, F.H. A Systematic Literature Review on European Food Quality Schemes in Romania. Sustainability 2022, 14, 16176.https://doi.org/10.3390/su142316176.

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper deals with important issue related to sustainability in beef production sector. The paper gives a contribution to new conceptual model of system-specific sustainability pillars that may guide the managerial and political strategies for the beef cattle sectors not only in Brazil but also in other emerging markets. The manuscript is clear and presented in a well-structured manner. The cited references are relevant but focus is putting on “Journal of Cleaner Production” (20 out of 68 cited references). However, some parts of manuscript should be improved.

Line 169-170: Reason why research focus is putting only on the review of the social science literature should be explained in more details.

The section “Discussion” should be more precise linked with main characteristics of beef cattle production systems in Brazil.

The same “Acknowledgments” is provided twice.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The review presented by Casagranda et al. aimed at evaluating the sustainability pillars of beef-cattle industry in Brazil. The concept/topic of the study would be a good addition to the literature by identifying and synthesizing novel themes or solutions to the improvement of sustainability in Brazil's beef-cattle industry. However, I would encourage the authors to consider and address the following comments before publishing.

 

Lines 104-105: I would suggest providing evidence or citation(s) to back up the point.

Lines 114-115: I encourage the authors to elaborate on the argument.

Lines 135-136: please implicitly list the causes. In addition, are these causes related to the examples/citations that are rendered later in the same paragraph?

Line 180: for (ii), what is the reason for excluding biological sciences? The livestock sector is an important part of the beef-cattle industry. Literature from livestock science and animal science may ingest critical information for sustainability in cattle farming.

Line 185: the (year) range of the literature search seemed not to be up to date. Why?

Line 254: does ‘referred categories’ mean the occurrence or frequency of the categories? If so, please justify the reason to use this quantification.

Line 266: why and how were the three clusters determined?

Lines 599-600: this conclusion might be inaccurate, and it can be due to the literature inclusion criteria. In recent years, there are more societal concerns about beef cattle, and animal welfare is an important topic that the authors need to consider in this context. In many regions across the world, animal welfare may drive changes in the livestock industry.

 

In the discussion section, overall, there is a lack of granularity when talking about the technique and science pillars. I would recommend the authors consider more concrete examples related to those two pillars e.g., internet of things (IoT) in the supply chain, animal breeding, and precision agriculture. These points are not necessarily related to agronomy or the economy, but more to the livestock sector.

Author Response

We want to thank you for your valuable and thoughtful comments. We followed all of them accordingly.

 

The review presented by Casagranda et al. aimed at evaluating the sustainability pillars of beef-cattle industry in Brazil. The concept/topic of the study would be a good addition to the literature by identifying and synthesizing novel themes or solutions to the improvement of sustainability in Brazil’s beef-cattle industry. However, I would encourage the authors to consider and address the following comments before publishing.

 

Lines 104-105: I would suggest providing evidence or citation(s) to back up the point.

AR: Thank you for your suggestion. Accordingly, we evidenced the point with the Brazilian case and references (Lines 93-95) also elaborated later in the paper.

 

Lines 114-115: I encourage the authors to elaborate on the argument.

AR: Thank you for your suggestion. Accordingly, we elaborate on the argument in lines 95-96.

 

Lines 135-136: please implicitly list the causes. In addition, are these causes related to the examples/citations that are rendered later in the same paragraph?

AR: Thank you for your suggestion. Accordingly, we listed the causes (lines 127-129). Yes, the causes are explicitly related to the examples of initiatives in beef cattle production.

 

Line 180: for (ii), what is the reason for excluding biological sciences? The livestock sector is an important part of the beef-cattle industry. Literature from livestock science and animal science may ingest critical information for sustainability in cattle farming.

AR: Thank you for your comments. Accordingly, we added a new subpoint “2. The research rationale”, in the revised manuscript, elaborating on the need for the research to focus on social sciences. We agree that biological sciences critically inform livestock sustainability, so we have not excluded the main physical issues from the discussion where we often refer to “Animal Science”, “Animal Production Science”, or “Animal”. However, it was not this research’s primary concern.

 

Line 185: the (year) range of the literature search seemed not to be up to date. Why?

AR: Thank you for your comment. Accordingly, it is further explained in point 2 mentioned above. The main reason is that the period embraced the last complete beef cattle cycle before the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak, which dramatically changed the market conditions for the beef sector.

 

Line 254: does ‘referred categories’ mean the occurrence or frequency of the categories? If so, please justify the reason to use this quantification.

AR: Thank you for your comments. Accordingly, we included the explanation in the revised manuscript in point 3. Research methods (lines 266-297). The result of the count indicates the frequency of occurrence, i.e. how often a category occurs in a given piece of text. Occurrence is the actual instance in which the category appears. This is a standard procedure for text analysis. It does not aim at the sociometric measurement and does not measure the significance.

 

Line 266: why and how were the three clusters determined?

AR: Thank you for your comments. Accordingly, we included the explanation in the revised manuscript (lines 266-297). The clusters serve as a convenient data summary, which can be used for further inference. The goal of clustering is to find structures that adequately summarise the data. The purpose of a clustering task is to detect structures in the data. To do so, the algorithm needs to (1) identify the number of structures/groups in the data and (2) figure out how the features are distributed in each group. The truth is that there are no correct clusters for an unsupervised learning method–only useful ones. One should use the clusters in a follow-up analysis to decide whether clustering is functional. It was useful if the cluster information helped predict better in a follow-up task. With a fixed number of 3 clusters, the K-means algorithm solves an allocation problem; that is, it decides for each of the cases whether it belongs to the cluster “1”, “2”, or “3”.

 

Lines 599-600: this conclusion might be inaccurate, and it can be due to the literature inclusion criteria. In recent years, there are more societal concerns about beef cattle, and animal welfare is an important topic that the authors need to consider in this context. In many regions across the world, animal welfare may drive changes in the livestock industry.

AR: Thank you for your comments. Accordingly, we developed the discussion in lines 705-718.

We agree that there are societal concerns about beef production and consumption, and changes during the pandemic highlighted the issue. However, this does not change the fact that lack of societal responsibility in Brazilian beef cattle production was one of the reasons for declined profitability of the top Brazilian meat producers in the pre pandemia period since the consumer demanded products of high-quality, deforestation-free and socially abuse-free.

 

In the discussion section, overall, there is a lack of granularity when talking about the technique and science pillars. I would recommend the authors consider more concrete examples related to those two pillars e.g., internet of things (IoT) in the supply chain, animal breeding, and precision agriculture. These points are not necessarily related to agronomy or the economy, but more to the livestock sector.

AR: Thank you for the suggestion. Accordingly, we improved the discussion – lines 680-692.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I am not interested in other published manuscripts, I reviewed your manuscript and my suggestion was to add more references. 

Good luck in your future research. 

Reviewer 3 Report

First, I wanted to thank the authors for taking the time and effort to revise the manuscript. All of my comments/concerns based on the previous version of the manuscript were addressed properly, and the overall quality of the manuscript improved significantly. In particular, I was able to follow the paper after reading Section 2. I believe the current form of the manuscript can be considered to be published.