Lamb export restrictions lifted

The lifting of Canadian import restrictions on EU beef and lamb opens up new opportunities and markets for Scottish produce, particularly lamb.

Production is declining in North America, where the US flock has halved in the space of a decade to around 3.7 million ewes.

Lamb consumption at a negligible 0.87kg per person, is even less than the abysmally low Scottish figure of 3kg per person.

However, with demand for sheepmeat rising from their growing ethnic communities, the USA and Canada could in time, provide a niche market for UK and Scotch lamb.

Richard Lochhead’s prediction that the 16% of Canadians with Scottish ancestry will want to buy Scotch beef and lamb, because of its Scottish provenance, may prove to be a forlorn hope. Unlike the iconic Scotch whisky and tartan, beef and lamb are not exclusive to Scotland.

Quality, price and value for money will matter more to North American consumers than their ancestral roots.

The Irish were cock-a-hoop when the US import ban on Irish beef was lifted in January, with imports restricted to high-value cuts such as fillet, sirloin and rib-eye.

It was anticipated that demand would be boosted by Americans of Irish descent switching to Irish beef.

But instead of the predicted 20,000 tonnes, worth e100 million in the first year, only 31 tonnes, worth e194,000, had crossed the Atlantic by July.

The Irish discovered the emotional attachment of the American-Irish to the motherland counted for little when purchasing beef.

They also discovered that mince, rather than steak, is the key to exports of beef to a nation where the burger is king. Who’d have thought it?

The US Department of Agriculture have always proved to be a difficult nut to crack and the high-level haggis negotiations in Washington have grabbed the media headlines.

The Cabinet Secretary is convinced that tens of thousands of Americans are salivating at the prospect of haggis appearing in their local supermarkets, and that the USA market for haggis is worth millions.

He has hinted that the traditional recipe could be tweaked to overcome the barrier posed by the sheep’s lung ingredient.

But if lung-free haggis is an acceptable alternative to the real thing you have to wonder why no enterprising American has already captured this lucrative market with a lung-free version.

Maybe it’s because the Americans want the genuine Scottish article, sheep’s lung and all. Tweaking the haggis recipe to remove this traditional ingredient may not achieve the result that Mr Lochhead is hoping for.

The trip to the USA and Canada must have come as a relief to our beleaguered Cabinet Secretary, a sea of calm in the eye of the payments hurricane. He will return from the US to face irate farmers at Agriscot on Wednesday where he’ll be thinking that haggling over haggis recipes in the USA was infinitely preferable to having his feet held to the fire over the BPS debacle at home in bonnie Scotland.

Scotch lamb might be snapped up by the growing ethnic communities across the Atlantic but its provenance may not count for as much as Richard Lochhead thinks.