Why does lamb cost so much?

tr3mor

LizEstelle wrote:

And remember... they're not just for Christmas...

Aye. You can eat them at easter too!

organic_wanabe

I bought a leg of lamb (British) in Sainsbury this morning costing £8.26 for 2.069 kg (£3.99 £/kg). The red band on the top says "Half price - usually £7.99 per kg). Its vacuum packed. Hope it tastes OK. Probably have it on Sunday and looking forward to it. We don't have it very often now because of the price.

ariba10

nearlyrich wrote:

I buy my meat from a butcher and I have never paid over the odds for lamb, we thought it was strange in NZ where we hardley saw lamb on any menus, apparantly they export it all.

I never saw lamb for sale in N Z only Mutton.

ariba10

DrFluffy wrote:

Lambs are not adult sheep...

Lambs are born in spring. It is not spring. There are not so many about...

And yet you never see Mutton for sale.

Icemaiden

organic_wanabe wrote:

I bought a leg of lamb (British) in Sainsbury this morning costing £8.26 for 2.069 kg (£3.99 £/kg). The red band on the top says "Half price - usually £7.99 per kg). Its vacuum packed. Hope it tastes OK. Probably have it on Sunday and looking forward to it. We don't have it very often now because of the price.

I bought two big legs aswell along with the beef & pork which is also half price at the moment.

albertross_2

Half price stickers are usually a marketing con.:D;)

Debt_Free_Chick

albacore1854 wrote:

Don't feel sorry for farmers they are all minted, and sitting on a fortune of assets.

Sadly, they're not. As has been posted, the farmer is getting about £2.50 per kilo for his slaughtered lamb, at market. And the supermarket are selling it for around £8 per kilo. These are the same supermarkets that many of us love for selling cheap food :rolleyes:

The average farm worker's pay is around £13,000 pa.

Those "fortune of assets" are the certainly not the land that is farmed. With the money (not) to be made from farming, who would pay a fortune for a farm? Remember, that farming land remains as such. It's a complete myth that you sell farming land to a housing developer and make a shed load of dosh. The Planning regulations don't allow it.

In any event, lamb is reared on pasture land that is generally too poor quality to raise livestock or other food (e.g. grain, cereal) that might generate more revenue/profit. It probably wouldn't be suitable for housing either - think of Snowdonia

Farmers are going out of business - or worse, committing suicide - every week. Around here, none of the farmers' kids - the next generation of farmers - are following their parents. They're all retraining in IT and financial services as they can see no future in farming.

Back to the OP. Why is lamb so expensive? I don't think it is particularly. Why do others think it's expensive?

Gabriel-Ernest

Debt_Free_Chick wrote:

Why is lamb so expensive? I don't think it is particularly. Why do others think it's expensive?

We've been looking at our diet recently and considering going veggie. As part of that we started to do a price comparison on meats a few months ago from the usual supermarkets on various cuts.

Beef £3.84 - £23.99/kg
Lamb £3.73 - £13.79/kg
Pork £2.39 - £7.94kg

The only thing we could say with any consistency was that beef and lamb were similar in price, but pork was quite a bit cheaper. Chicken was cheaper than pork; didn't look at turkey. Sainsburys worked out cheaper for beef, Costco cheaper for pork. The price of lamb varied between the two according to cut, and neither came out as much cheaper than the other.

In terms of the cheapest reasonable roasts we would have, beef rib roasting joint was £5.89/kg from Sainsburys, lamb boneless leg was £6.69/kg from Sainsburys, pork boneless rolled leg was £3.19/kg from Costco.

We normally get our meat from Morrisons; we find it reasonably priced (unfortunately don't have the figures to hand) and extremely good quality. All the meat we've tried from Lidl has been awful. Our local butchers are expensive and not noticeably better quality; haven't tried a farm shop.

Penny-Pincher!!

We mainly eat chicken/lamb/fish.

I generally dont pay alot for lamb. I picked up 3 half of legs from Sainsburys frozen for £3.49 each as they are half price ATM. I also stock up on Tescos diced frozen lamb which is about £2.50 for 300g and can get a great size stew from this, padded out and with dumplings for about 6 people.

Also every few week we go to supermarkets in the evening and buy yellow stickered lamb for pennies. Taste the difference special raised lamb with 4 big juicy chops for £1.80...normal price £9, also joints from £12 to £3 etc etc:eek: :eek: :eek: ...Frozen mince lamb from Aldis is £1.99 for 1.5kg and is delicious. 1/3 pack makes a huge shepards pie for 5 people.

PP
xx

DawnW

It is in fact hard to make a profit from farming these days (my OH has worked on one for over 30 years, and so did I at one time), especially sheep farming. The price the supermarkets pay the farmer has no bearing at all on what you pay in the supermarket! That works for milk, vegetables, beef, eggs, chicken, pork as well, you name it! Supermarkets compete to drive down the prices paid to producers, and this has caused lots of bankruptcies (I don't think I have spelled that correctly), and other farmers just selling up and getting a different sort of job, because it is next to impossible to make a profit from most farming enterprises. Therefore the numbers of farmers is shrinking every year. At one time they were pretty well off, but not so now, unless they diversify by doing tourism things, or sell off land. Some farmers of course rent their land, not own it, there is a lot of variation. Try a farm shop, or some farmers will sell direct even if they don't have a shop, if you have a half or whole lamb for the freezer. Some butchers will give you a better price if you buy this way too. Not supermarkets though (unless someone knows different?).
'Lamb' is usually about 6 months old when you buy it, give or take a couple of months. If over a year, it is called mutton instead. That is nice too, but very trendy and expensive! Remember that lamb is often 'free range' unlike lots of other meats. To be sure, buy it later in the season as the early Easter ones tend to have been reared inside, albeit in barn conditions, not battery cages or anything like that. You can taste the difference. I have recently bought half a big lamb for £35, lots of difference from supermarket prices quoted above, AND I know where it has come from.