The coincidental holy Sundays this year have triggered a spike in prices for the milk-fed, 50-pound lambs coveted by the large Italian and Greek communities in Toronto and Montreal.Will Burgess/Reuters
For Eastern Townships farmer Bob Laberge, it meant waiting hours to bring his flock to market and eventual slaughter late last month. Many of his colleagues lined up overnight at the auction barn in Saint-Hyacinthe, Que., as if they were buying hot concert tickets.
The lineups were actually a result of the heated Easter market for lamb: About five times every 20 years, the Easters of the Orthodox and western Christian faiths fall on the same Sunday, taxing the supply lines of butchers, bakers and lamb partakers.
The coincidental holy Sundays have triggered a spike in prices this year for the milk-fed, 50-pound lambs coveted by the large Italian and Greek communities in Toronto and Montreal. (Bakeries also reported unusually high demand for braided bread, but flour supply lines remained intact.)
"It's a real double whammy," said butcher Tony Maro, who was run off his feet Thursday at his family's shop in St-Leonard, an Italian neighbourhood of Montreal. By the afternoon, the milk-fed lambs were all gone, Mr. Maro said, although other cuts were still available.
Mr. Laberge said the Easter holiday accounts for about half of his lamb sales, and the timing of breeding, feeding, sale and slaughter must be carefully determined for the holy days. It's much easier when they fall on different days.
"When their Easters are together, it means you have to have more lambs ready at once, and more slaughtering capacity. So it's a real bottleneck all of a sudden," Mr. Laberge said.
But the 22-per-cent rise in the price of milk-fed lambs, to about $130 a piece, also reflects a wider, steady rise in price and demand for the red meat. Consumption in Canada has risen constantly in recent years. By 2007, Canadians were each consuming an average of 1.2 kilograms per year, more than double the level in the early 1990s. (Lamb remains a small fraction of the 23 kilograms of red meat the average Canadian consumes each year.)
After an entire generation of Canadians suffered through frequent meals of stringy, fatty mutton from old goats and sheep during the Second World War, the meat fell out of favour for decades. Producers say tender meat taken from younger lambs has renewed interest among the postwar generation, who also have the money to buy pricier cuts.
"Our parents were turned off, but the baby boomers and their children are much more adventurous in their food choices," said Norine Moore, a sheep farmer in Stavely, Alta.
Lamb and mutton are also staples for the growing number of Canadian families of Middle Eastern and South Asian origins. Mr. Laberge said lamb consumption is often linked to holy days. An Ontario sheep marketing magazine publishes a helpful list of more than a dozen holy days that would allow lamb sellers to target different cultural communities.
"Lamb is an ancient product with a lot of cultural significance," Mr. Laberge said.
Canada produces less than half of the sheep consumed domestically, while big suppliers Australia and New Zealand have recently declared shortages. Lamb producers in Alberta have held recruitment drives trying to convince people to take up the craft of raising sheep.
"We got a huge amount of interest," said Ms. Moore, a board member of the Alberta Lamb Producers, who has raised sheep for 25 years.
"But we have the same problem as farming in general. We aren't getting younger people. there are a lot of producers nearing retirement age."
Ms. Moore said she is hopeful that the ongoing promise of high prices - unlike many other sectors of agriculture - will draw new recruits.