Bye, Bye, Miss American Lamb Board Pie: A New Rant

Pictured here: Rebecca King's lambs at Deep Roots Ranch. Not for dinner!

While enjoying a warm and lazy summer morning here, I squeezed in a little time to catch up on my Bloglines subscriptions.

It seems that an entity called "The American Lamb Board" is pimping lamb, and I mean pimping hard. They even have themselves a very non-profit sounding ".org" on their website. StephenCooks, whom I not only admire but LIKE (really really like) wondered if the American Lamb Board was on the up and up, and asked Farmgirl Susan, of the incredibly popular Farmgirl Fare blog, to add her two cents. The most important thing she said was this: "But of course, naturally raised, grass-fed lamb that is hopefully locally produced is not as easy to come by--and it's going to cost more than the stuff at your average supermarket whether it's American or not. Unless it's marked otherwise, supermarket lamb will most likely come from animals fattened up quickly on grain in feedlots."

Stephen wasn't the only blogger to accept free lamb (nothing wrong with freebies!) from the American Lamb Board, and who blogged about it. So did these good folks:

Amuse Bouche
Livin' La Vida Low-Carb
White Trash Barbeque
Get Your Grill On
Christine Cooks
Kalyn's Kitchen
Simply Recipes

Having recently been buzzed by marketers to pimp their products, I was already on Cynical Red Alert mode. I suspected unholy (or at least, unhealthy) alliances, especially when I saw that Fleishman-Hillard was involved.

For those who read my recent post about "Moove Your Ass Out of Here, Evil Marketing Idiots," you may remember Fleishman-Hillard's unsuccessful attempt, back in November, to get me to market the idiotic "Healthy Mr. Potato Head" for the National Potato Board. The upshot of these two stings is that I am even more cynical than ever about doublespeak and marketing buzzwords. Any kind of "national board" has me going straight to the website to sniff around for the inevitable stink of corporate inhumanity, and evidence of tainted political connections.

I didn't have to look long.

Don't get me wrong: I agree with the idea of American lamb because it's unconscionable to eat meat that is flown literally halfway around the world from New Zealand, et al. But somehow I didn't think that the environment was driving the campaign to get people to ingest even more meat than they already do. Nor did I think it was altruism on the parts of the copywriters and ranchers to be so concerned with American health that they would bend over backwards to promote the low-calorie, protein-rich meat. In three-ounce portions, yeah, right. (Because it's so typical to eat such a small amount, right, America?)

An overview of the website provides interesting information. Not all of it is clear, and I am certain that not all of it is INTENDED to be clear. First of all, the word "checkoff" appears countless times, but it's never defined. (It's rather like that word, "daypart" that is used in the fast food industry, indicating the profitability of certain mealtimes. For A & W, their best 'daypart" is lunch, for KFC, it's dinner, so that's why you see them sharing stores: to maximize profits.)

At the ALB website, on the page for "lamb industry: checkoff accomplishments," I find this:

Your lamb checkoff has accomplished a great deal in a very short period of time. We want to celebrate our successes in FY 2004 with all of the contributors and industry partners! Our successful promotional programs would not have been possible without your contributions. ALB is proud of the accomplishments of the checkoff program and will continue to work hard to invest your checkoff dollars into new and innovative programs that will most efficiently increase the demand for American Lamb and increase the industry’s opportunities for profit.

Emphasis, mine. Remember that ".org" in the web address? How disingenuous is that? From Wikipedia:

In the US and the UK, the .org TLD is mostly associated with non-profit organizations (in the latter '.uk' is usually but not always added after the '.org'). In addition to its wide use in the charitable field, it is often used by the open-source movement, as opposed to the .com domains used mostly by companies.

This isn't NPR we're talking about, folks. The American Lamb Board folks are all about the profit: they have an advertising budget that is nearly $1.5 million! Non-profit, my ass. But because (another red flag) they are under the auspices of the U. S. Secretary of Agriculture (whom I trust, implicitly, like I'd trust Roman Polanksi with my teenaged daughter), they are slightly off the political radar, at least with Googleable connections. The indirect connections, however, are a different story.

So, Spidey Senses all a-tingle, I got to work Googling. I have used Typepad's wonderful new feature of building a free-standing page (not a blog post) to make a few points about the bedfellows of the American Lamb Board. Will be you shocked to know that they are (duh) allied with the American Meat Institute? Doesn't "American Meat Institute" sound nice, like a studious, white-walled environment where scholars assemble to discuss pristine theories about, well, meat? I'm sure PETA would have you believe that the walls are as blood-spattered as the labs their own people destroyed, but who knows?

MY RESEARCH AND COMPILATIONS:

1. American Lamb Board's political ties,

2. A breakdown of the political contributions made by their partner organization, the American Meat Institute, in 2006.

I had left a comment on Stephen's blog, saying:

Dear Stephen:

Fleishman-Hillard, a multi-national ad agency, are the same asshats who wanted me to pimp "Healthy Mr. Potato Head" for them. Since conventionally grown potatoes are one of the most contaminated with pesticides, I took them to task for having such gall.

I am going to deconstruct the American Lamb Board....or maybe eviscerate them, if the evidence warrants.

This is agri-business.

Your food always looks charming, but I have no doubt that they hand-selected the best cuts to send to you and all the other bloggers they wanted to enlist for free marketing.

I don't blame Stephen for accepting the lamb he received. He said it was from Superior Farms, and was no doubt specially chosen for him, the Superior Farms "Pure Lamb" that constitutes the tiniest minority of what's being sold from sea to shining sea. You buy it in the supermarket, you're getting polluted meat, and you KNOW that's true. And I am willing to suspend most of my suspicion about Superior Farms marketing-hype on their website and think maybe some of it is the truth, and that they are perhaps better than most of the meat producing operations in the country. I haven't seen their operations: my suspicions are based on, well, everything else we know about producing meat in mass quantities, and how hard that is to do cleanly, humanely, and sustainably.

I Googled some names on their Board of Directors. Google "Bill Brennan Iowa Lamb Corporation" and you'll find a result for slaughter houses that includes a listing of his company in Denver, where (second only to CarGill, Inc., who kills, excuse me, renders 6000 a day), Denver/Iowa lamb is rendering 5000. A DAY.

5000 lambs a DAY, and they're not tucking them in under eiderdown quilts, folks. I can't imagine what the place looks like, but genocide comes to mind. Sorry, it does.

I'm not saying not to eat lamb. Or not to eat meat.

I'm not saying what these people cooked and wrote about on their various blogs wasn't very tasty indeed. (As for me, with rare exceptions, lamb tastes very dead to me. I've only had it a few times that it was good, and that was because it was very fresh, very clean, pastured lamb. But eat lamb, if that's what you like!)

I'm just saying sometimes it's good to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially if his trainer is Fleishman-Hillard, or people of that ilk.

Let the blogger beware! Don't fall for it, and for god's sakes, don't give them all that free publicity. You owe them NOTHING. You don't have to be complicit in their machinations. (If it were me, and a fait accompli, I would write up the recipe but not mention the name of the entity who provided it. And I would surely want to know the dollar value of what they sent me: a $70 cut of pastured lamb is surely going to taste a lot better than what the average Joe will be able to buy at the supermarket.)

That's all for now, but I've added a new category, "RANTS," to my blog categories. So they're easier to find, and perhaps to avoid, if you just want the good news.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “A fool and his money get a lot of publicity.”  — Al Bernstein

What would YOU do in this case?

Thanks for visiting.

Oh, and P.S.

SeriousEats, a website with a lot of otherwise cool people involved, gives a shout out to one of their sponsors: the National Pork Board. And of course, comments are closed. You can just imagine what I think about that. And I can imagine that the comments are closed because a LOT of us think exactly how horrifying it is to be sponsored by a group so deeply involved in the worst kind of factory-farm animal abuse on record anywhere. 

I left a comment on a blog that I would imagine new definitions of kosher would not be so centered around the possibility of disease, but of humane treatment of animals. If you're eating bacon from your supermarket, you're eating sh-t. Literal sh-t, because that's what those pigs breathe all day, and it informs their flesh. If you ever had clean meat, you could not eat that stuff again.

National Pork Board: is that my next rant? I think I'll take a breather and see what else comes up that's good—and inspiring—to focus on.

 

Comments

[stephen]

Tana...

I still love you, too....!

xoxo Stephen

(and I'm putting up link to this post on my site....)

[AnnaMarie]

I love Lamb! However, the icelandic lamb in my freezer comes from my friend Mary (really, Mary's Lambs) who ives 6 miles from me. Pasture raised, organic raised. We eat the meat and spin the fleece. Hopefully next season we start milking a few as well for cheese. While lamb might be difficult to find in some areas around these parts find your 4-H club, you'll find pasture raised lamb. You can buy it on the hoof, have it delivered to the processor and then pick it up yourself. I even get the casings and innards so that I can make my own sausage and dog treats. Mary keeps the hides and tans them and the horns for buttons. We haven't made haggis yet but we're talking about it *g*

My next quest is humane raised pork. Time to call 4-H.

[Liz]

Great post, Tana!

I admit that I was skeptical when I saw the "lamb provided by the lamb board" tag at Simply Recipes, but didn't think to investigate as you did. Bravo!

If I'm going to eat meat (and I do), I want it raised by my own hand or the hands of someone I know. No shit for me, thanks! ;)

[parke]

What a great post. You let 'em have it! Here's a link to start with if you ever decide to explore the National Pork Board.

[jo]

I agree with many of your reservations about factory farmed meat. In fact i have done a lot of the research on it as well. Husband and I have been trying to find a source for non factory produced bacon for a long time now.
The sad fact is for many of us, real farms and access to good quality, kindly reared meat is still very minimal. Especially I might add on the East Coast.

With shipping costs for frozen or fresh meat so prohibitive or the need to buy half an animal and store it, quality farm raised meat is out of reach to many.

When I teach classes and we talk about meat I address many of these issues with my students. I talk about chicken farms, pig farms, beef slaughterhouses. Sometimes I get the enlightened student who has done their homework, but more often than not it is just Joe Blow, living in a small apartment in the city, maybe relying on public transportation with no car to drive to local farms and access to Farmer's markets only in season. Most days the only option is Perdue, Smithfield or noname brand. I wish I knew what to tell them.

[karen]

Everyone has a motive and nothing is free, right? It's discouraging sometimes to go out into the marketplace trying to find good food.

I'm feel fortunate that we have some wonderful families raising grass-fed lambs here in Missouri.

That's where my dollar goes...

[Amy Sherman]

It seems to me your blaming the Lamb Board for hiring Fleishman Hillard and blaming Fleishman Hillard for being in the PR business.

Do you judge a lawyer based on his/her clients? Do organizations not have a right to PR just as a defendent has a right to a lawyer? Believe me, even "eat local" food advocates make spurious arguments, it doesn't mean their cause is any less just.

[Bill Fosher]

I'm a sheep producer and one who voted against the involuntary funding mechanism -- production tax, if you will -- that sustains the ALB. Here's what a checkoff is and how it works.

Whenever I sell any sheep to anyone, the buyer is supposed to deduct one-half cent per pound of the sheep's weight and retain that money. If the sheep is then sold again, that money, plus any more that is required (if the sheep has gained weight) is passed along to the next buyer.

When the sheep is ultimately slaughtered, the entity that owns the sheep at the moment of slaughter is to remit one half cent per pound of liveweight plus 30 cents per head to the ALB.

A typical lamb will weigh between 100 and 150 lbs at slaughter, so the ALB is getting about $1 per lamb slaughtered in the US, just for the sake of round numbers. The ALB also gets a little money from every lamb that's imported into the US, dead or alive.

It is using this money to promote a product (American Lamb) that is already in short supply, varies wildly in quality, and is generally produced a long ways from the places where it is processed and consumed.

The difficulty faced by US shepherds is not lack of demand for our product. It is poor quality control, processing bottlenecks, and the high cost of shipping live lambs and processed meat from where they are produced to where they are consumed. The ALB deals with none of this. I would have supported a production tax on lamb if it were to be used to support the improvement of the infrastructure in the industry, as opposed to going down a rathole.

What happened is that by and large, the farmers and ranchers who raise sheep bought the idea that campaigns like "Got Milk?" "Pork, the other white meat" and "Beef, it's what's for dinner" had helped their respective industries because everyone knew the slogans. However, no study has ever shown that these campaigns increase profitability of the farmers and ranchers that pay for them.

As to the question of profit, the ALB is by charter a non-profit entity. Its claims about profit are supposed to be profit to the farmers and ranchers who are paying for their efforts. Its $1.5 million advertising budget is for the generic promotion of American lamb. The ALB is a legit non-profit agency, whether you and I like its mission or not.