Continued growth in lamb imports, coupled with the continued decrease in American sheep producers and American sheep numbers was enough to catch the attention of two national organizations recently.

R-CALF USA’s sheep committee filed a petition in August with the United States Trade Commission Ambassador Katherine Tai for relief from lamb and mutton imports which the group says has decimated the United States commercial sheep industry.

The petition includes a request to Ambassador Tai for a Global Safeguard Investigation and a request that Congress establish a phased-in tariff rate quota (TRQ) system over 10 years. The group states that during the 10-year phase-in period, the TRQ would be used to encourage the growth in production of the U.S. sheep industry to achieve a 50 percent market share in the United States by year 10.

The petition shows that 74 percent of lamb and mutton consumed in the U.S. now originates from foreign soil, and domestic production has declined 60 percent.

The petition includes personal letters from 15 different sheep producers and feeders from South Dakota, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Idaho and more.

Following are a few excerpts from three letters:

The lamb industry is in dire need of help in managing imports that are killing our industry. Studies show that 70 percent or more of lamb sold in the U.S. is imported. Our industry can no longer support the consumption of lamb in the U.S. because imports have caused it shrink dramatically. However, we would like the opportunity to build our industry back and without the use of tariffs or quotas, we will continue to watch its extinction.
Thank you for our time and consideration of this request for help.
Sincerely,
Jeff Hasbrouck
Double J Lamb

Colorado

To whom it may concern,
My name is Jared Cornelius. I’m writing you today. To express my worries of the future of the US sheep industry. I am the soul family member still involved in agriculture. My wife and I have been running around 900 range ewes in iron County Utah since November of 1997. In 1997 lambs sold $1.06 per pound. Wool was around 80 cents. Times were good.
Three years ago I sold lambs for $2.78 per pound. Wool around $1.80 per pound. Again
Times were great. Then we had to use our earnings to try and stay in business. Due to a depressed lamb price of 97 cents. Wool at 88 cents. The government needs to be mindful of this when they are over flooding our markets with imports of lamb and wool. They are killing a multi million dollar industry.
Sincerely,
Jared Cornelius

PETITION FOR RELIEF
I am Henry Etcheverry, owner of Etcheverry Sheep Company in Rupert, Idaho. My father came to the United States in 1929 at the age of 16, from the Basque country of
southwestern France. He went to Ely, Nevada to herd sheep for eight years, followed by four more years in Utah. Herders at that time were paid $50 / month. It was always his desire to have his own sheep outfit.
In 1947 my dad, Jean Pierre, purchased 1200 ewes and started his own business. With hard work and patience, he built up the operation to 7000 breeding ewes and 1500 yearlings as well as ranges to support them. I joined the business after graduation from college in 1972.
Always producing some of the best lambs in the west, we have gotten top lamb prices. We were members of Mountain States Lamb Co-op from its inception until its end, sending approximately 10,000 slaughter lambs annually. In those years and today we have seen our market share diminish along with our price per pound. Presently I sell our lambs to Double J Lamb. They are sold on the hook, so to speak, which is at the end of the chain.
We need more money for our lambs, simply a fair price. The US industry packers are told if they ask for more of a carcass price, the meat purveyors, chain stores, jobbers, etc. will switch to imported lamb. It is inferior to domestic lamb but the price is consistently under our U.S. price. We are held hostage. The Australians have lower costs and less regulations than we U. S. producers do.
The long and short of this is I am 74 years old. I have a top-notch range sheep outfit and someday, sooner than later, will need to sell it. No young person in his/her right mind will take it on. It’s a very satisfying business and has been profitable but as of late the imports are killing us. We need tariffs or some type of help that would put us on a level playing field.
We contribute to our local communities: buying goods, groceries and services; providing
work to shearers, truckers, herders; buying feed and pasture. We pay taxes as do our
herders. We participate in the U.S. system. The importers don’t even pay a tariff. They have total free trade. Imports are overwhelming us. Any help for the U. S. sheep industry will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Henry Etcheverry

The 33 page petition shows that imported lamb and mutton, primarily from Australia and New Zealand, have increased 2,363 percent in dollar value and 543 percent in quantity since the early 90s.  

This petition says that lamb and mutton imports are not subject to the more stringent production standards required of U.S. sheep producers citing points such as the widespread use of compound 1080 for predator control in foreign countries while the chemical has been all but banned in the United States.

R-CALF USA Sheep Committee chairman Bill Kluck, Mud Butte, South Dakota, said sheep producers are excited about the petition and have made considerable donations to keep the effort alive. He calls it a “stop gap” measure that may provide temporary relief, and said he hopes the industry can gain more permanent relief through congressional action.

“Australia has wonderful wool sheep but they are not really a meat animal. It’s not the quality that we raise,” he said, and added that the exchange rate is also currently harmful to American producers.

According to the petition, American lamb consumption has increased significantly over the past decade but imports from foreign supply chains has captured all of that demand while domestic production continually declines.

 “We find ourselves at a pivotal crossroads in American agriculture. We are outsourcing the production of our food to other countries. I don’t know about you, but I cannot think of anything more dangerous than becoming dependent on another nation to feed Americans,” said Carson Jorgensen, a 6th generation American sheep rancher from Utah. “The sheep industry is simply the canary in the coal mine. If we do not act now, not only will we lose the American sheep industry, but we will have opened the door to the ultimate decimation of American agriculture by way of imported food.”

Kluck also said County Commissions from Harding, Butte, Fall River and Custer Counties in South Dakota have signed on to a resolution supporting the petition.

American Sheep Industry

In addition to R-CALF’s petition, the American Sheep Industry, a national sheep organization, hired the Washington, DC-based Kelley Drye firm which specializes in trade cases, to investigate whether or not enough evidence existed for the industry to file anti-dumping or counterveiling suits against Australia and/or New Zealand for the large amounts of imported lamb that had entered the United States in during 2020, 2021 and 2022. according to the group’s president Brad Boner, a Wyoming sheep and cattle rancher, the group decided not to go forward with a case.

According to the World Trade Organization, dumping is, in general, a situation of international price discrimination, where the price of a product when sold in the importing country is less than the price of that product in the market of the exporting country.

Countervailing is a practice wherein a country subsidizes a product being exported to another country. Counterveilng duties,  also known as anti-subsidy duties, are import duties imposed under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules and aimed to neutralize the negative effects of subsidies.

The ASI investigation determined that while dumping of lamb was probably taking place, the effect was negligible. “The investigation found that the dumping was minimal. Maybe a 1-2 percent margin,” said Boner.

The investigation did find that the industry could probably prove “injury” and would probably win that portion of a trade case with the International Trade Commission, he said. “What that means is that the imports were one of the causes of our financial issues,” said Boner.

“So, given that we would probably receive little to no relief out of a trade case and the cost would be $1.3 million, we decided at least at this time to not go forward with the case,” he said.

The extremes in the lamb market from 2020 to 2022 and beyond are due to a multitude of causes including Covid, imports, a quickly changing lamb consumer base (immigrant populations and other non-traditional consumers) and more, he believes.

“For example, at least a quarter of more of our member states didn’t really experience the lower lamb market like we did in the Intermountain West in 2022 because they were selling into a non-traditional market,” he said.

The ASI supports a bill introduced by Wyoming Senator John Barrasso to maintain an import ban on sheep and goats until studies have shown that the possibility of contamination or transmission of BSE-related diseases have been completely eliminated.

His organization will also continue to monitor Australia to make sure they are playing by the rules, he said. Consolidation in the packing sector is surely affecting the sheep industry, with one packer, Superior (located in Denver, Colorado and California), being larger than the others, and Colorado Lamb (Colorado), Double J Lamb (San Angelo, Texas) and Wolverine (Detroit, Michigan) being the next largest plants.

JBS is the biggest lamb packer in Australia.