My mother, a thrifty pensioner as so many of her generation learned to be, says she doesn't eat much meat any more. "Too bloody expensive" she says.
So, why is it that lamb costs so much? The comments of the news story showed the most expected to pay, when it wasn't on special, between $40 and $60 per small leg.
Figure.nz says there were 19,451,000 lambs slaughtered full stop in New Zealand in 2017 and just under 3,700,000 adult sheep (hogget, mutton etc). We've gone down from a population high of 70 million sheep in New Zealand in the 1980's, to around 30 million in today's population. Forget the export numbers of live sheep - these are very small beans compared to our exportation of chicken (by far the most), beef and surprisingly, bees.
It's accepted sheep farmers don't make as much money as beef and dairy farmers do. Yet, you have to ask why that is?
Wool isn't as popular as it once was, given the huge steps forward in technology for producing cheap man-made materials ranging from clothing to carpets.
So... what's happening to the other sheep? Farmers don't get a huge payout per lamb, stable on average at around $87 each, although that's better than it has been in other decades.
I, like many others, grew up being able to pick up a half side of mutton for around $25. It was what you did - getting three good roasts, neck chops, shoulder chops and a "colonial goose" roast which was rolled flap with stuffing made to go inside before using the butchers string to tightly hold it all together. You could also get or buy, the 'poor man's roast' in the lamb shanks. Yes you had to process it yourself, but that was accepted.
For those, like my mother, who grew up knowing how to bone out a sheep carcass and have less than an icecream container of waste, and myself, who learned her skills, it was a very staple part of the diet.
Yet today, those mutton carcasses every supermarket and butcher used to have are gone completely. You just don't see them now.
What you do still see is the disgusting trend of crumbing old mutton, effectively hiding the sinews and ligaments of sheep that is butchered while not in the best condition. You'll see neck chops if you are lucky.
If you want to know what's happened to the rest of the cuts and the lamb/sheep you need to go to the fancy aisles and you need to have a finger on the Master Chef cooking shows and all the other of the same ilk that have changed the way we use the meats. Lamb racks, shanks (of all things!) roasts neatly (and in most cases, lets get two out of the one rear), boned out and "butterflied". And you are indeed paying through the nose for this. The point remains however, that it is still cheaper to buy New Zealand lamb in Europe than it is to buy it here. Think about that for a minute. It has to be slaughtered to a strict code (after having been selected for its exportability), processed, packaged, pass all the export/import systems and then be onsold to a variety of wholesalers before it arrives - cheaper than NZ - on the shelves of our northern lamb eaters.
Perhaps it's time we had a real inquiry as to why all of the many foods we process, from meats to dairy products, fruit and vegetables (because make no mistake, the export market gets the best) are sold to us at prices that are exorbitant and usually for seconds. We have a huge problem of obesity and its subsequent problems because too many of our lower income people find it cheaper to feed an entire family on takeaways than they do a healthy meals of meat and three veg.
I also believe quite firmly that the voracious maw of supermarkets, which has seen the demise of many family butchers, is partly to blame for this. They will buy at a bulk, low rate - but to make the required profit, they'll charge their customers like a herd of wounded bulls.
We eat very well in our above average income household. But even I baulk at the cost of a leg of lamb, which all too often these days is more than 5% of the average Joe Bloggs take home pay.
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