Naive food writer misses the story

A city-girl Denver Post writer wanted to do a food section story on lamb. A perfectly legitimate thing to do, for an excellent meat that has priced itself out of the average family's food budget and largely become a specialty meat for the wealthy, ethnic or an occasional splurge meal out.

The thought process and idea were good, but the execution was what you'd expect from someone who knew nothing about the subject, besides liking lamb chops, and quickly got in over her head. As one of my favorite pundits has said of much political commentary "it had the depth of a saucer."

What the story only hinted at, or left out altogether, was much more important than the cutesy-pie drivel that was left in. The reporter attended the weekly sheep auction at the livestock market in Fort Collins, CO. A perfectly good auction, which would be out of business except for everything else it sells at other times of the week besides sheep. On a good week Fort Collins might sell 500 head of sheep, while the main market maker at San Angelo, Texas regularly sells over 8,000 head a week and frequently hits 12-15,000 head a week.

Even this impressive total is only a fraction of the sheep slaughtered and eaten each week, as most sheep never see the inside of an auction barn, selling directly on a very thin market to the packing plant in Greeley or the one in San Angelo. The market for sheep is not made in Fort Collins, believe me.

The writer interviews the owner of an ethnic restaurant in Fort Collins who bought one head for that week's menus. That's the problem with the lamb business: it's become a rare specialty meat. They slaughter over 100 times more cattle or pigs or chickens each week in the U.S. than they do lambs.

It's reflected in the supermarket meat case and on restaurant menus. If lamb is there at all, it's off in a small corner and very expensive. This is a shame, but what the environmentalists and animal rights activists have done in not allowing sheep to be protected from predators like coyotes, and western ranges protected for meat animal grazing.

You understand, you'd have read none of these facts in the Denver Post article. But boy, those baby lambs sure are cute . . .