Stuebner: Let’s stop ignoring the obvious. Our Western sheep ranchers need help now!  

I just about choked on my Wheaties when I read an article last week with the headline: “Evidence lacking for action against imported lamb.”

For crying out loud, how much more evidence is needed! The American Sheep Industry hires a D.C. lobbying firm for millions of dollars, and they can’t see the current trend that’s putting western range sheep ranchers out of business? 

Two months ago, I put on a press conference in the Boise Foothills featuring longtime Idaho sheep ranchers Henry Etcheverry and Frank Shirts, who are fed up with the huge imports of Australian and New Zealand lamb being dumped into the U.S. market and the resulting price-crushing that occurs to large sheep ranchers across the West as a result. Those foreign imports now exceed 74 percent of the American market.

The trend line for the last 50 years is that foreign imports go up, western sheep operations go out of business.

Our headline was: “Idaho Range Sheep operations in danger of extinction from low prices, heavy foreign imports and meat packer monopolies.“

Etcheverry and Shirts know exactly what’s going on – they’re living it every day. It’s incredibly frustrating to them that they can’t get any help from ASI, the Biden administration or Congress on this issue.

Our timing was good. R-CALF issued a national press release at the same time in August and sent a petition to U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, requesting relief from “injurious” lamb and mutton imports from Australia and New Zealand.

Biden administration officials have publicly stated that they want to go after big multinational monopolies. They could start with the meat-packing industry, “the big four” in the U.S.: JBS, Tyson, Cargill and Marfrig.

Whenever there’s a shortage of lamb world-wide, and sheep ranchers like Shirts and Etcheverry stand to make a decent profit, JBS Australia will ratchet up exports into the U.S. market and bring the price back down, crushing the little guys who work 24/7 to raise quality lambs on the western range.

“The Australians are dumping product in the U.S., and no one is doing anything about it,” Shirts says. “It just makes me sick. I’m not sure how long we can take this before we give up. And if we are forced to quit business, we’ll be gone forever.”

“I’ve been doing this my whole life,” Etcheverry says. “We love the sheep. We love raising the sheep. It’s in my heart. It’s in my blood. But right now, it seems like we’re circling the drain. We have got to do something to fix this situation.”

Sheep grazing on public lands is a positive, conservation tool. Peruvian herders trail the sheep from the low country to the high country, fattening the lambs with fresh feed, while the sheep prune the plants and drop manure pellets along the way, invigorating the range and reducing fire danger. Compared to the early days of millions of sheep covering the country, now we have much smaller numbers grazing across the landscape once-over-lightly.

The Trailing of the Sheep Festival in Ketchum/Sun Valley, Idaho has become one of the top fall festivals in the nation while locals educate the public about the different aspects of sheep ranching in Idaho and the benefits to the range and local communities. People love it.  

But we stand to lose our range sheep operations forever, as Shirts and Etcheverry point out, if Congress and President Biden do nothing on this issue. It would certainly help if ASI could stand up for what is right – and the American sheep industry could unite – to work together to prevent the western range sheep industry from going extinct.

Steve Stuebner has been covering natural resources and conservation issues in Idaho for more than 35 years.