01/24/05 Lamb referendum set

American Rancher January 24, 2005 The USDA has set the voting period for the lamb referendum for January 31st through February 28th. The referendum will be conducted at USDA's county Farm Service Agency offices. To be eligible to participate, you must provide documentation, such as sales receipts, that shows that you were engaged in the production, feeding or slaughtering of lambs during the period of January 1, 2004 through December 31st of 2004. The Lamb Checkoff Program is authorized by the Commodity Promotion, Research and Information Act of 1996. The program provides for the assessment on the sale of lamb and lamb products and for an industry board to carry out promotion, research and information programs designed to increase the demand for lamb and lamb products. Montana Wool Growers Association state executive Bob Gilbert, says it is important to keep promoting American Lamb. Gilbert: "We are talking about promoting American Lamb in the meat case at supermarkets, calling at high end restaurants and restaurants to say that lamb is an item that ought to be on your menu and the public is wanting that. You have to get out to make calls to get results on getting your product in there. At the present time the foreign markets, Australia-New Zealand, have fifty percent of the lamb sales in this country. That is not good. We need to take back the marketplace and it is going to take some cash to do it." For the Lamb Checkoff program to continue it must be approved by a majority of voters who also represent a majority of the volume voting in the referendum. I'm Bob Hoff.