RED DEER – A new initiative to encourage Albertans to eat more lamb is taking hold.
Participants in the Alberta Lamb marketing group are linked with customers and processors. Customers can tell the producer exactly what they want and the meat is delivered in a timely fashion according to their specifications.
The year-old program encourages Albertans to go after their local markets.
The project started before bovine spongiform encephalopathy halted all international ruminant livestock and meat sales. Those involved wish they had developed the concept 10 years ago.
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“Cattle have had all the publicity and a lot of people didn’t realize sheep were part of the ban,” said Margaret Cook, program co-ordinator.
Dan Sinclair and Ileana Wenger of Bowden, along with Nigel and Sue Scott of Didsbury, are participants. Working with several other families, they have a marketing group known as Rosebud Lamb.
Signing onto the lamb project allows them to use the wild rose trademark and professionally prepared promotional materials including recipes and nutritional advice. They hope to change consumers’ ideas about lamb. People have old-fashioned ideas about lamb that date back to the Second World War when they or their parents ate canned mutton.
The program helps producers sell top quality lamb as a branded product.
“It has to be our best lamb and they have to be uniform,” said Nigel Scott.
“We’re only submitting our top end lambs. It’s only the cream of the crop,” said Wenger, who is also a veterinarian working on genetic improvement among purebred operators.
Program participants agree to place their lambs on a grain diet for 21 days and follow strict health rules that promote food safety. Finished weights depend on customer desires.
There is no cost to join the marketing group, said Tony Legault, a director with the Alberta Lamb Council that oversees the promotion activities.
Many Alberta lamb producers already sell their product directly to customers through farmers’ markets or personal client lists.
The initiative encourages people to join a wider group of producers. The council has a database of 140 producer members representing 35,000 lambs. Alberta Lamb staff can link them to potential customers and local abattoirs capable of processing the meat according to buyer requests.
Alberta Lamb is not a marketing board so prices are privately negotiated.
The Alberta Sheep and Wool Commission and the Canada Agricultural Rural Development agency provided $200,000 over the next five years for program development and co-ordination.
As a director of the sheep commission, Legault was caught off guard last year when he attended the annual red meat reception for provincial politicians and premier Ralph Klein asked why Alberta lamb was not readily available at home when he could find it as far as away as California.
Selling locally has not been a priority. People felt it was easier to ship the lambs to Eastern Canada or the United States rather than work on local sales pitches.
“It was a little bit of a struggle getting people excited about it and getting it going,” he admits.
After May 20, lamb producers with meat and animals could no longer export their product. They realized a new marketing hook was a means to survival.
“You start to realize, look at what’s at home,” he said.
“Alberta has grown and we have a huge diverse ethnic population and they all eat lamb.”
The lamb council hopes broad participation among producers can alleviate the problem of year round availability.
Finding a larger customer base may also help move some of the harder to sell cuts.
For now, the program will target niche markets because there is not enough lamb to supply a major retail chain store. That is why New Zealand and Australian frozen lamb rather than Canadian lamb is still sold in larger stores.
Ultimately, program participants hope to increase domestic consumption and establish consumers’ taste for lamb so when borders reopen, they have a broader range of customers and can negotiate better prices.
Although meat from lamb younger than 12 months is eligible for export to the U.S., the product must be boneless, which rules out many cuts like leg of lamb, racks and chops.
