USDA Needs Lamb Sales Reports

This past spring, the American Sheep Industry Association asked wool producers to report their sales in an effort to help the U.S. Department of Agriculture develop an accurate picture of the market situation. And now, ASI is asking lamb producers to follow suit.

The loss of the Mountain States Rosen plant in Greeley, Colo., is affecting the lamb industry on several levels – one of which is the loss of negotiated, formula and comprehensive slaughter lamb prices reported due to confidentiality guidelines imposed by USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service. This has reduced the amount of market information and decreased market transparency available to sheep and lamb producers.

In an effort to provide producers with market information to facilitate open, transparent price discovery, ASI is asking producers, feeders and others involved in direct feeder lamb sales to report those sales to Chris Dias at USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service at 970-353-9750.

Specifically, the association is looking for information on the following:

• Direct feeder lamb sales for the mountain area and western United States (Colo., Wyo., Mont., Neb., S.D., N.D., Utah, Nev., Idaho, Wash., Ore., Ariz. and Calif.).

“Just like it was with the wool, this price information is invaluable to the American sheep industry,” said ASI Executive Director Peter Orwick. “I can’t stress enough how important it is that we come together as an industry to provide as much information as possible to the Agricultural Marketing Service. In the long term, we will all benefit from contributing to these price reports.”