How Do You Solve a Problem Like Falling Lamb Consumption - Thoughts from Sheep 2010

There was standing room only for the session on marketing at last week's NSA event where farmer Geoffrey Probert, May Hill representative Henry Dunn, Remi Fourrier from EBLEX, and Steve McClean of Marks and Spencer discussed a variety of issues.

The problem of plummeting lamb eating in the home market was addressed, and the general concensus was that quality is fine, its all about price.

For Remi Fourrier, who is responsible for growing British lamb sales to France from it current one in 5 lambs produced, the main issue is encouraging younger people to eat lamb, and that ways had to be found to make lamb more convenient to cook.

Henry Dunn, representing May Hill who sell to Sainsbury, pointed to the success of Cotswold Lamb which he feels works because it has a strong provenance story. Consumers like the idea of knowing where their lamb has come from and how it was produced. Steve McClean agreed. Marks and Spencer shoppers are interested in provenance too, and increasingly in the impact of products on the environment. M&S are planning to add more environmental compliance measures into the standards it requires from producers.

All mentioned that consumers of ethnic origin eat large quantities of sheep meat - a figure of 27% was quoted, but all recognised the sensitivity of slaughter procedures required by some.

Returning to the quality issue, there were a couple of comments about grass fed lamb producing a top quality product. This was considered to be one of the reasons behind New Zealand lamb's good and consistent quality. Marks and Spencer source from NZ in our winter, and aim for grass fed lamb in summer for this reason. As Mr. McClean said "It's all about ensuring consumers have a good eating experience when they buy lamb".

So no silver bullets emerged from the debate.

As a firm believer that, whatever the product, price is a problem if the quality does not match up, I was surprised that quality and consistency of lamb did not get more of an airing.

A look at WorldPanel numbers supplied by BPEX shows that in the 12 weeks to July 11th, lamb sales dropped by a further 8%. So the problem of what to do about falling lamb sales is not going away.