Lamb, anyone?
At the very suggestion, grimaces distort the faces of people who think they detest that meat-people, for example, who were fed bad mutton during World War II and passed their distaste down to their offspring, who in turn handed it off to yet another generation.
Lamb producers, packers, retailers and some restaurateurs have been fighting a somewhat frustrating battle to overcome that collective memory of a pungent, stringy protein source. They believe that an aftertaste lingering from the `40s should have disappeared by now.
Lamb, anyone?
The lamb industry would like us to banish old perceptions and think about a tender, juicy, pink, lean alternative to beef. It could, they insist, star brilliantly in an eventful meal, such as a big Easter dinner. Moreover, according to the Chinese calendar, this is the Year of the Sheep, another sign that lamb, at last, should be coming into its own.
”It has a very neutral flavor,” said chef Jonathan Harootuian of the Public Landing restaurant in Lockport. ”I can utilize it in many different ways. It has a pleasant flavor. Sometimes beef can be just a little off-tasting. I like lamb.”
His enthusiasm has not swept up diners at the Public Landing, Harootuian admitted.
”I`m running a lamb shank right now, which is braised in vegetables with white wine, and I`m having a hard time moving it.”
That difficulty reflects tastes across most of the nation, according to the Washington, D.C.-based American Meat Institute.
”On a per-capita basis, we eat less than a pound and a half of lamb per person per year,” reported institute economist Jens Knutson. ”With beef, it`s 68 pounds per person.”
Knutson could offer no logical reason for such a disparity.
”Most of America just doesn`t appreciate the product,” he said. ”A pound and a half a year is nothing. A family of four might go through that much in one sitting.”
Sales on the upswing
Folks at the American Lamb Council in Englewood, Colo., prefer to look at the bright side.
”Lamb sales have gone up about 16 percent from where they were four years ago,” said Jim Bruce, the Lamb Council group vice president for lamb marketing. ”We`ve gone from about 310 million pounds a year up to about 370 million pounds.
”In terms of space, it`s the fastest-growing item in the meat case,”
Bruce said. ”Feature activity-when the stores run an ad on lamb-is up 70 percent for that four-year period. Case space is up about 35 percent; the number of cuts being offered is up about 15 percent. So we`ve seen some very, very positive signs at retail. And the National Restaurant Association said a couple of years ago that lamb was the fastest-growing menu item among center- of-the-plate items.”
Bruce attributes much of that growth to promotional efforts and a potential appeal to the health-conscious: ”Basically, most of the fat in lamb is external to the lean meat. It doesn`t have the internal marbling (of fat)
that beef has. Once you trim off the external fat, you have a very lean cut of lamb.”
The council, obviously, is a font of lamb fact and fable. Personnel even discuss, somewhat willingly, the American aversion to it.
”The story that I heard,” said Robin Ganse, council publicist, ”is that lamb was pretty popular up until World War II, and at that point consumption dropped quite a bit.
”One reason is that the government was trying to preserve a lot of the sheep for wool production for the war effort. The other thing is that the soldiers were fed what they were told was lamb but was actually mutton. It must have been pretty hideous because after they came back they would never eat lamb again.”
Age and flavor
Rules of the industry stipulate that lamb meat comes from an animal less than a year old. Between ages 1 and 2, the animal is called a yearling. After that it`s mutton, stronger-tasting and a bit tougher, which is the way much of the world prefers it.
But all those Americans who coddle their palates and blood vessels tend to lean toward low-fat and mild-tasting varieties. The American Lamb Council, as part of its stepped-up marketing effort, imposes labeling standards in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, so consumers know what they`re getting.
Labels on the approved product bear a sticker that reads ”Certified Fresh American Lamb,” and the meat carries a USDA stamp.
”It`s all voluntary,” said Barry Carpenter, deputy director of the USDA livestock and feed division. ”It isolates a segment of the population of lambs that have certain attributes and identifies it as certified American lamb.
”Basically, it`s judged on factors having to do with the cutability, or how lean it is. It`s an evaluation that it is young and has a high ratio of lean to fat. It`s not a grade, per se.”
Like beef, lamb can be graded as prime, choice and select (formerly
”good”), based on fat content, which affects flavor. Lamb also can be evaluated on a scale from one to five according to yield, or fat-to-lean ratio, with one being the leanest and five being the fattest.
”Again, those grading systems are voluntary,” Carpenter said. ”It depends on what the industry wants to do. They can quality-grade it, or they can yield-grade it, or they can do both.”
Lamb and veal packer Ernest Beutenmiller III, president of Clayton Meat Co. in St. Louis, welcomes the labeling system.
”It guarantees the consumer a much more consistent product,” he said.
”I would say the labeling and grading program has given us personally an increase of 35 percent in sales since last year.”
Made in the U.S.A.
Beutenmiller said he values that ”American” designation on the sticker, too, because it tells customers that the lamb does not come from big exporters, such as New Zealand or Australia.
”Most of the lambs imported into this country are raised for their wool and not for their meat,” he said. ”They do not have the meat kind of muscle structure of the American-type carcass.”
Lamb promoters also have introduced a wider variety of cuts in an attempt to boost sales.
”Nowadays, we`re making a thing called Denver rib, which years ago was a piece of lamb breast, an item that people didn`t really want,” said meat-packer Bryan Chiappetti of Chicago`s Chiappetti Lamb and Veal Corp.
”Denver rib is almost like a back rib. We take the brisket off and trim all the fat down. It`s a nice little lunch-menu item.”
Lamb is most popular among residents of the Northeast, Florida and California, and it does particularly well in ethnic neighborhoods and enclaves of chic.
”It works in a lot of ethnic foods, like Mediterranean and Middle Eastern, and those are pretty popular now,” the Lamb Council`s Robin Ganse said.
The distribution system works much the same as it does for beef cattle, with the product proceeding from pasture to feed lot to packer to store, restaurant or processor, not without peril.
Texas, California, Wyoming and Colorado contain the biggest concentrations of producers, with some individual flocks reaching 5,000 head. Illinois ranks fifth in the nation in the number of farms raising sheep for market.
Sheep have four stomach compartments that enable them to handle all the grasses and weeds they consume while grazing. Like cattle, lambs are fattened with hay and grains, mostly corn when they get to the feed lot. The added grain disrupts that process at first, but tends to smooth out the flavor of the meat.
”Another area we have to be concerned about is pneumonia, one of our major causes of lamb loss,” Ricketts said. ”It`s not necessarily caused by cold weather; a lamb can stand a lot of cold. We usually run into pneumonia problems when we have a lot of high humidity.”
Enter the coyote
Major causes of lamb loss are pneumonia and predators. Coyotes frequently attack the sheep and lambs grazing at Roy Meek`s Mountain Empire Farms in Bristol, Va., killing 4 percent of the flock every year.
”Lambs are more complacent than most other breeds of livestock,” Meek noted. ”They have no way of defending themselves. When predators get after them, they just stand still. There`s not a very good way of protecting them. If you have frequently recurring instances of losses, you just about have to sit up with them until you catch whatever`s doing it.”
In the winter, Meek was feeding only 250 ewes. In the past, he might have kept up to 3,000, he said, but because ”the market has been down tremendously at the producer level, even though retail prices are as high as they`ve ever been,” he sold off much of his stock. Most lambs are born between January and April, causing cycles of glut and shortage that leave ranchers in a state of perpetual discomfort.
With the flock severely reduced, Meek`s sole border collie, Wayland, has had less work to do. As the sheep graze the steep Virginia hills and mountains, Wayland`s job is to dictate their movements and keep them together. ”There`s a lot of eye contact in the way he works,” Meek observed. ”He stares them down. He seldom barks, never bites. He just faces the sheep until she decides she needs to go in another direction.”
No doubt, members of the lamb industry would like consumers to become precisely that compliant and give their delicious product a second chance.
