Canadian farmers are missing out on the lucrative market for sheep and goat meat in Canada’s ethnic population, say owners of a slaughter plant desperate for sheep and lamb.
Mohammed Azim of Riverside Meats in Salmon Arm, B.C., said producers who focus only on the Easter lamb market are missing out on bigger markets during the month-long Islamic holiday of Ramadan.
“Our figures show we double meat sales in one month,” said Azim.
Ramadan is the 30 days of August this year, but it moves ahead 11 days each year.
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Seventy days after Ramadan is Eid- Ul-Adha, a four-day festival when demand again soars.
“Ask any price and you will get it,” said Azim.
Toss in celebrations at Christmas, when Hindus, Sikhs, Italians and Greeks in major Canadian cities are searching for sheep and goats, and the markets become huge, he added.
He said refugees and wealthy immigrants do a good job assimilating into Canadian culture, but their taste buds don’t assimilate.
“They still want lamb and goats.”
However, Canadian sheep and goats are limited, and Azim struggles daily to fill orders. He said he can easily sell 100 sheep and goats a week, but some weeks he can only find three or four.
“We’re highly unsuccessful. It’s brutal,” said Azim, who phones potential suppliers weekly to buy a few animals. “The sellers are getting telephone fatigue. We call every week. They just don’t have any.”
Ben Tschetter of South Peace Colony between Dawson Creek and Fort St. John, B.C., shipped his last load of last year’s lambs three weeks ago, but that hasn’t stopped the phone ringing from buyers who want more.
“They’re already calling for new ones,” said Tschetter, whose northern B.C. colony lambs more than 800 head of ewes each year.
In 2003, after BSE, the colony built a feedlot to assemble and finish lambs from northern Alberta and B.C. It sells most of its lambs to Vancouver and Vancouver Island but is supplying only a small part of the market.
“This time of year, especially, everyone is looking for lambs.”
Roger Albers of Stony Plain, Alta., said his feedlot is almost empty. The remaining animals will be gone by mid-May and the feedlot will stay empty until summer, when it refills with this year’s lamb crop.
A combination of strong prices for new crop lambs and the hot Easter market makes prices too high to fill the feedlot, he said.
“It’s hard. There’s just not enough. There is such a scrap out there competing with other feedlots and other ethnic markets pulling them off the farm before we even get to bid on them,” he said.
“To sell them, it’s fine. The markets are good, whether in Toronto or the West Coast or Innisfail. The demand is there.”
