Warren Moore sells about 150 lambs per week to discerning customers who know what they want.
“There are 400 lambs a week consumed in Calgary each week,” says Moore, who owns Second Chance Livestock in Stavely, Alta.
“As a producer I would never have thought that.”
His customers are restaurants, small retailers in Calgary and those of the Muslim faith, the fastest growing religious group in Canada and large consumers of lamb at 17 kilograms per year.
About 80 percent of Moore’s lambs go to the halal market, where customers require a ritual slaughter.
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The challenges of supplying homegrown lamb was part of the debate at an Alberta Sheep Symposium in Calgary, where producers learned they are only filling 50 percent of the market.
The Canadian Sheep Federation has set a five year goal to increase the national market by an extra quarter kg per year per person.
In 2006 the average Canadian consumed 1.2 kg of lamb per year. It would require an extra 60,000 lambs per year to meet that goal, at a time when national flocks are in decline.
The gap is filled with imported meat.
“If the Canadian producer is not going to meet that demand, someone else will do it for us,” said Jennifer Fleming of the sheep federation.
“We are putting money into someone else’s economy to strengthen their sheep industry.”
To meet retail and restaurant demand, Canada’s largest federally inspected lamb plant is forced to import live American lambs, said Merrell Dickie, livestock procurement manager at Sunterra Meats in Innisfail, Alta. The plant will handle about 75,000 lambs this year.
The company supplies a wide range of retailers in Western Canada and a consistent supply is needed year round.
“All those stores want lamb every week,” he said.
Stores won’t keep buying from Sunterra if it cannot supply lamb every week, he said. As well, he added, carcasses need to be of consistent size, weight and fat cover, a requirement that is often hard to meet.
“We still get producers who don’t deliver what they say they are going to deliver,” Dickie said.
“Sunterra is a customer of yours so take the time to understand what is required. You are not sheep producers, you are lamb producers.”
To meet its quality parameters, Sunterra wants lambs shorn six weeks before slaughter so they are not bruised. The rear ends should be crutched and the bellies need to be clean. Dirt from the belly can end up on the meat, which must then be removed with a knife or by washing. Producers pay this cost, Dickie said.
Plant inspectors are also forced to condemn animals because of diseases such as sheep measles, pneumonia, jaundice and bruising from rough handling either on the truck or at the farm.
