January 2013- Natural culling or getting fleeced?

Thursday, January 3, 2013

North American lamb prices have been falling, with reaction varying depending upon which side of the border a producer is on.

"Lamb producers take falling prices in stride," says an August headline in The Western Producer, based in Saskatchewan. "Correction considered long overdue," says the subhead. Apparently 2011's high prices were considered unsustainable.

In the United States, it is a different story. Eight Congressmen asked Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to investigate the sheep procurement practices of meat packers (there are only two) and R-CALF USA, which bills itself as "fighting for the U.S. cattle producer" has joined in. (Looks like those range wars are a thing of the past). R-CALF complains that, in 2011, lamb and mutton imports increased by 390 per cent and the United States now imports more sheep meat than it produces. BF