Leadership establishes sheep industry priorities

While some of the Lamb Industry Roadmap recommendations have already been addressed, the four key goals still remain relevant and more work needs to be done. The goals of the roadmap include:

• Make American lamb a premier product every time.

• Promote lamb as a premier meat.

• Improve productivity to remain competitive.

• Work together as a whole industry.

The roadmap helped bring the industry together to focus on these goals and it is important to continue to facilitate this collaboration and passion to grow and strengthen the American lamb industry. The Roadmap Implementation Committee has turned the reigns over to the national sheep organizations and sector leaders that have the resources to implement these strategies and commit to industry-wide collaboration. These strategies require coordination and collaboration across all sectors and industry organizations. The Roadmap Implementation team has been dissolved and a new lamb industry Leadership Roundtable has been established to help drive changes throughout the supply chain that will increase the industry’s productivity and profitability in every segment.

The goal is to provide a forum for leaders from all sectors and national industry organizations to accomplish the following:

• Discuss industry challenges and issues.

• Develop strategies to address the four Roadmap goals above.

• Work together to gain back market share from imported lamb.

• Strengthen our industry’s competitive and long-term profitability.

Roundtable members include: Benny Cox and Peter Orwick from the American Sheep Industry Association; Dale Thorne and Megan Wortman representing the American Lamb Board; Ryan Indart of the National Lamb Feeders Association; Rick Stott with Superior Farms; Frank Moore of Mountain States Rosen; Reid Redden with Texas A&M AgriLife; and Minnesota producer and feeder Dan Lippert, who serves as chairman of the roundtable.

The Leadership Roundtable held its first meeting in August and committed to work on the following priorities:

Support an expanded role for the National Sheep Improvement Program to improve production efficiencies, increase the supply of out-of-season lambs and improve the quality and consistency of American lamb. As NSIP’s role is to motivate producers to be more productive and more profitable, it is ideally suited to educate producers about genetic selection as part of a system-wide approach to improving overall production efficiencies.

Increase the supply of out-of-season lambs. The Roundtable aims to increase the supply of packer-ready lambs between May and September by shifting current production and encouraging additional production through an industry-wide education and awareness campaign.

Improve feedback to producers and feeders regarding carcass quality. The Roundtable supports working toward broad industry commitment of a feedback loop for all lamb processed and ensuring the electronic grading is being fully utilized to evaluate carcass qualities beyond weight.

For more information, please reach out to the Leadership Roundtable member that represents your sector.