Food for thought as price of lamb tops that of salmon

IT IS unlikely many of the farmers attending the Sheep 2010 event at the Three Counties showground at Malvern this week went there thinking about the price of fish.

But for Geoff Probert, a large-scale producer of both pedigree and commercial lambs based in Worcester, there is a comparison. "Who would have thought that the price of lamb is now higher than the price of salmon? It is something we would never have dreamed about," he told sheep farmers at one of the seminars.

His point was not only that sheep meat was now an expensive product, but also that lamb faces dangers in the marketplace, with customers trying to reduce their spending. "You have to wonder how much further (the price] will go," he said.

Probert compared the price of lamb on the supermarket shelves not just with fish but with that of chicken, which is often on offer for as little as 2.50 for a whole bird.

Every year, Probert sells between 1,600 and 1,800 finished lambs in his local market of Ludlow and believes that by selling this way, the whole industry benefits. "Markets set the pace. At this time of year when lambs are scarce, the big retailers are in the markets filling up their quotas," he said.

Steve McLean, agricultural manager for Marks & Spencer, agreed that lamb was now an expensive meat and said there had been a year-on-year fall in sales. However, he said, his firm was trying to counter the trend by offering a wider range of lamb products including some he described as "forgotten cuts" such as shoulder of lamb. "It is all about ensuring consumers have a good eating experience when they buy lamb," McLean said.

With France taking a major proportion of UK-produced lamb, the views of Remi Fourrier, the French agent of Eblex, the English beef and sheep promotional body, were listened to with interest.

Sales in France at the top end of the lamb market have been affected by the general recession in the economy. But UK sales to France have still managed to increase in the past year.

Fourrier said Eblex's St George campaign, highlighting the British origins of the lamb, was paying off. "British lamb - from all three countries, England, Scotland and Wales - is now well established," he said.

Most buyers were still keen to buy whole carcasses, Fourrier said, but now they wanted them to be tagged as coming from one part of the UK. This was a big advance on previous practice where the country of origin was never something that could be promoted, he said.

Also some buyers were now adapting to buying boxes of specific cuts to suit their markets and this was another method of getting extra returns from the market.

The big imponderable in exports to mainland Europe is where the relative currencies are valued. Fourrier said he expected there to be a bit of a "yo-yo" between sterling and the euro in the coming months and admitted this made exports a more difficult market.