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Committees >
Marketing >
Marketing Slaughter Goats and Goat Meat Products in
the United States
Dr. tatiana Luisa Stanton - Extension
Sheep & Goat Associate
Northeast Sheep & Goat Marketing Program, Cornell University -
Ithaca, NY 14853
Introduction
The survivability of our US meat goat industry is dependant on
improving its accessibility and desirability to the huge base of
goat meat enthusiasts right here in the US. National goat meat
consumption has grown sharply. The goat slaughter rate at USDA
inspected facilities climbed from 207,893 goats in 1991 to 595,501
goats in 2002 and 647,000 goats in 2003. Imports from our largest
importer, Australia, increased from approximately 3 million pounds
in 1990 to 17 million pounds in 2003. Assuming a 40 lb carcass,
which is the largest carcass popular with most importers, this
equals a minimum of 425,000 more goats.
Who Is Our Customer?
Increased consumption is driven by the popularity of goat meat
with the diverse ethnic groups that immigrate yearly to the
US. The popularity of goat meat with immigrants is not new. In
the past, many of us immigrated to the US from countries where
goat meat was popular. However, the perceived scarcity of goat
meat in the US and the melting pot mentality discouraged
people from holding on to their goat meat traditions. In
recent years, we’ve seen a switch in philosophy to one that
encourages people to celebrate their diverse cultural
backgrounds. The introduction of South African Boer goats into
the US received major publicity and helped make city dwellers
more aware of the availability of goat meat. Approximately 10%
of the US population is foreign born with ~51% of these first
generation immigrants coming from Latin American and a
substantial percentage of the remainder identifying themselves
as Muslim. Most immigrants settle initially in metropolitan
areas making it relatively easy to concentrate goat meat
marketing in these areas. The Northeast US accounted for only
4.5% of the total US goat population in the 2002 Agricultural
Census. However, due to the high concentration of recent
immigrants in Northeast cities, the same region accounted for
47.5% of the goats slaughtered in federally inspected
slaughterhouses. The low income base of many newly immigrated
families, particularly refugees, initially suggests that
pursuing these markets will tie farmers into a low price/low
value product. People on a tight income may be attracted more
to cull animals and to frozen, imported goat meat.
Australian and New Zealand supply
a major portion of the imported goat meat sold commercially in
the US. This market has been growing at an annual rate >30%
since approximately 1990 and has been able to piggy-back on
Australian and NZ lamb industries. With the help of US
investors, Australia and NZ have been able to develop highly
professional, centralized in-country slaughterhouses
specifically for lamb export purposes. Companies like
Australian Meat Holdings have been able to hold farmers to a
consistent product, while compulsory government health
programs have helped encourage some uniformity of management.
It has been easy to include goats in these same processing and
marketing enterprises. Furthermore, as part of the British
Commonwealth, Australia and NZ have previous experience
establishing substantial goat meat export markets to other
Commonwealth nations (for example, Jamaica and India). Taiwan
has traditionally been the largest importer of Australian goat
meat. However, goat meat exports from mainland China to Taiwan
are starting to take a substantial portion of this market
share. The strength of the US dollar is still sufficient to
make it unlikely that we can compete profitably with Australia
let alone China for these export markets. Rather, we need to
ensure that locally produced goat meat is viewed as more
desirable than imported product by US consumers.
It is estimated that approximately 90% of the goat meat
imported from Australia is harvested from extensively managed
“feral” goats. Quality may be inconsistent and these
enterprises are generally not viewed as a lucrative, growing
trade. Carcasses are shrouded in plastic or boxed as 6 primal
cuts (“6 packs”) and frozen and transported by boat to the US.
A benefit of this less expensive, year round product is that
it keeps families in the habit of consuming goat meat.
However, a growing portion of Australian and New Zealand goat
meat is available as flown-in cryovaxed fresh carcasses and
retail cuts from export slaughterhouses that have been
approved for USDA federal inspection. United States goat
producers need to come up with serious rationale for why our
own “homegrown” consumers should choose our goat meat over
fresh imported product.
Luckily, many families become upwardly mobile as they
establish themselves in the US. Even people on a tight budget
prefer to splurge for locally slaughtered goats for weddings,
funerals, and special feasts. There is also a strong trend in
the US for the consumption of farm fresh product. Much of the
focus of the US goat meat industry should be on making it
easier for consumers and processors to obtain the goat meat
product they desire year round. We need to insure that the
children of immigrants are encouraged to continue these
dietary preferences. It is counterproductive if goat meat is
available only sporadically, specific carcass preferences are
ignored, people are made to feel unwelcome when seeking out
goat meat through established channels, or if our marketing
infrastructure collapses in on itself and offers all of us
fewer marketing choices. We do not need to limit ourselves to
seeking out only an “ethnic” market but we better make sure
that we nourish and acknowledge this market as the base of our
existing demand.
Improving our accessibility
How do we make product available year round? Right now, we are
probably lucky to have a supply of Australian goat meat for
consumers to fall back on when US meat is scarce. However,
this encourages distributors to abandon the US industry
completely and market exclusively imported product. If we plan
on expanding our US goat herd (and as we all know, goats
multiply quite easily), we need to develop a base of producers
who are willing to manage their herds more intensively either
through accelerated breeding cycles or staggered kiddings to
provide product more reliably year round. This is hard to do.
Most of us are inclined to target peak demand times such as
the Easter and winter holiday seasons, and Ramadan Id al Alha
with their accompanying higher (sometimes) prices.
How do we make product easy to find? The events of September
11th and subsequent compulsory check-ins for immigrant men
from certain countries have inadvertently resulted in many
ethnic customers maintaining a very low profile. Where people
might have felt comfortable stopping unannounced at your farm
to ask if those goats in the front pasture are for sale, the
same families may be very reticent today. We need to be
assertive about finding new ways to contact different cultures
about local availability of goat meat. Visiting mosques and
foreign student associations, handing out business cards at
auctions, sending press releases about their farms to cultural
news journals and establishing on-farm live animal markets are
some actions producers have taken.
How do we provide sufficient supply even for special holidays?
As producers, more of us need to group together to pool
animals for sale. These groupings do not need to be formal
cooperatives particularly if they are 1) targeting one
particular distributor and 2) the products are live slaughter
goats. In order to easily locate dealers, distributors,
packers, processors and transportation, we need to encourage
the accumulation of web based marketing services directories
across more regions than just the Northeast US. The number of
smaller USDA slaughterhouses willing to slaughter sheep and
goats are decreasing at an alarming rate. Helping to publicize
these USDA slaughterhouses is crucial. Having easy places for
producers to find contact information for buyers also
increases our accessibility. However, many producers do not
have the time to seek out buyers and investigate their credit
status. Many buyers are also hesitant to deal direct. The
development of large, graded sales where goat kids are grouped
according to weight, age, and condition for a multitude of
buyers is also very important. As part of this we need more
sales willing to sell goats by the pound and more sales where
prices paid are put on public record by a disinterested third
party.
Improving Our Desirability
Bob Herr, a popular order buyer at the New Holland Sale, likes
to say that there is a customer for every goat, a goat for
every customer. It is important that producers educate
themselves about the types of goats that are popular for
various seasons. It is also important for producers to
communicate well with their buyers to make sure they are
accurately representing their animals and matching the animal
to the market demand. This does not mean that the market is
stagnant or does not appreciate some education from producers
themselves. Many of us who market direct have experienced
customers who initially were leery of meatier, possibly
fatter, Boer X carcasses and then became more impressed upon
seeing the carcasses hung next to a dairy breed or Spanish
goat carcass. Many immigrant customers desire a tender,
younger meat once both the husband and wife are working and
faster cooking dinners become a priority. However, knowing how
to contact and communicate with buyers and getting educated
about the market is a first step in meeting customer desires.
Many ethnic customers are proud of
their ability to judge the carcass suitability of a live
animal. New York City has a long history of live poultry
markets and in recent years many of these have expanded to
include small ruminants. An animal can be purchased at them
and then slaughtered at the on-site custom slaughterhouse.
This is one market that Australia cannot compete with us for.
However, state departments of agriculture may not be aware of
the importance of these markets and could subject them to
excessive regulation. Organizing annual meetings between state
agriculture officials and representatives from statewide lamb
and goat producer associations may help these agencies stay in
touch with industry priorities. Live animal markets generally
provide a wide range of animals to satisfy the diverse market
demands of various cultures. In states where they are
permitted, they provide a way for city dwellers to insure
their own quality standards.
Desirability and acceptability of
goat meat products for the general US public will be improved
if slaughterhouses with religious exemptions handle animals as
humanely as possible. As producers, we need to exert pressure
on Halal slaughterhouses to adopt humane restrainers based on
Temple Grandin designs.
Marketing Strategies To Get A
Bigger Piece Of The Pie
There are many marketing strategies that producers can adopt
to reap more of the market share of their goats. Almost all of
these require an investment in extra labor and/or capital on
the part of the producer.
One of the easiest marketing strategies is pooling. This is
the gathering of animals from several farms together at one
centralized pick-up point to offer a buyer a sufficient supply
of animals. Arrangements need to be made for one person to
represent all of you in negotiating price and to assign or pay
a person to insure that animals meet the quality standards of
the buyer.
In fall ‘2002, the Northeast Sheep
& Goat Marketing Program at Cornell University helped link a
pool of producers up with a live animal market in NYC. This
live animal market had its own livestock truck and was thus
able to deal directly with producers. Farmers were paid
$1.15/lb live weight for weaned kids weighing 55 to 100 lbs
minus an estimated 4% shrink. The buyer also paid $.85/lb live
weight for cull does minus 4% shrink. The arrangement was
sustained through the winter and early spring but eventually
folded. Problems arose because 1) producers were unable to
provide sufficient quantity of consistent product year round,
2) shrinkage loss was very variable from one type of animal to
another (for example, fat cull does versus recently weaned
kids), 3) the buyer could not find a reliable driver and thus
trucked himself and had to justify his time away from his
business, 4) the marketing coordinator found it difficult to
enforce quality standards if the buyer did not proactively
speak out on questionable animals.
Another way to deal directly with
buyers is to organize on-farm live animal markets. These work
when farms are within commuting distance to metropolitan areas
with large meat goat consuming populations. They are dependant
on your state having a relaxed interpretation of the exemption
for custom slaughtering of farmer owned livestock. Similar to
the NYC live animal markets, customers come on farm, purchase
an animal and have it slaughtered at the on-farm
slaughterhouse. These live animal markets often need to
purchase animals from other farms to meet their demand. For
example, a goat producer located between Buffalo and
Rochester, NY found that despite raising approximately 150
kids from his own farm, he needed to purchase 490 goats from
17 other producers in 2003 for an average price of $70.72 to
meet the needs of his live market/custom slaughterhouse
business. He also purchased 162 goats from local auctions
averaging $55.32 per goat.
Cuisine from goat consuming
cultures has grown in popularity with an increasingly
cosmopolitan U.S. mainstream population. The healthy profile
of goat meat is also attractive to today’s consumer. The goat
cheese industry has done a lot to destroy the public’s
inhibitions against goat products and many people who pride
themselves on a discerning palate are interested in trying
goat meat. Producers can opt to market retail cuts direct to
restaurants and consumers. A disadvantage of selling
particular cuts to restaurants is the need to find a use for
the rest of the carcass. Many ethnic restaurants, however,
prepare recipes that use the whole carcass.
Selling direct to businesses on a
year round basis is very labor consuming. It is best done
either by producers who raise a diverse range of products and
thus save time by marketing a multitude of products to each of
their customers, by large producers raising goats fulltime, or
by formal cooperatives. Another option is for a group of
producers to get together and market directing to a buyer for
one or two particular holidays each year when demand is high
and may absorb their entire kid crop. Even when done by a
cooperative, it is recommended that products be identified by
farm name regardless of the overall brand. Many of the
restaurants and retail stores interested in buying direct from
farmers want to emphasize the actual farm source. A farmer or
cooperative that breaks into the retail market or markets a
branded product to distributors needs to insure that the price
received will compensate them for the extra time needed to
coordinate slaughter, processing, transportation and regular
communication with buyers.
Tables 1 through 3 show actual prices received and expenses
incurred for suckling Boer cross kids in 2004 through 3
different Northeast marketing channels. Table 1 represents an
informal grouping of goat producers for Easter where one
producer acts as coordinator and absorbs some of the costs
himself. For example, the coordinator paid for all telephone
calls associated with the shipments, purchased the plastic
shrouds for wrapping carcasses, and steam cleaned and lined in
plastic the stock trailer and pick-up trucks used to transport
the carcasses. Dressing percentages ranged from 63% to 57 %
although a few animals dressed as low as 50%. Cooler shrink
from slaughterhouse to retail store ranged from 6.4% to 2.6%.
Average carcass weight was 21 lbs. Farmers received returns of
about $1.73 to $2.00 per lb live weight for kids weighing 30
to 55 lbs respectively. This did not include their
transportation costs from farm to slaughterhouse. The previous
year prices received from the same buyer were $3.90/lb dressed
carcass, slaughter fee was $16 and price to transport
carcasses through a refrigerated trucking company averaged
$5.00 per carcass.
Table 1.
Prices received per pound live weight for Boer X suckling kids
at Easter 2004 for an informal market pool in the NE US,
assuming 57% dressing percentage (head on, organs hanging ,
hide off) and 4% cooler shrink
Table 2 shows an Easter marketing
venture where a goat producer decided to become a middleman in
2004. Farmers were paid $1.80 /lb live weight outright for
kids weighing about 30 to 55 lbs. Live animal transportation
costs by the dealer from the farms to the slaughterhouse
averaged $.10/lb live weight and carcass transportation costs
from the slaughterhouse 30 miles to the retail buyer averaged
$.10/lb dressed weight including ice and gas but not tolls.
Carcasses were transported in a refrigerated truck owned by a
neighboring vegetable farmer or in ice packed coolers in the
back of a pickup truck. Dressing percentages ranged from 54 %
to 63 % (average 57 %). The average carcass weighed 24.5 lbs
and resulted in a return to the dealer of $18.27 for their
phone calls, road tolls, labor, and capital investment.
Table 2.
Prices received outright by farmers (paid $1.80 /lb live
weight). Return to “dealer” for Easter 2004 after accounting
for some marketing expenses. Carcass is hide off/head on,
organs hanging.
Table 3 illustrates a year round
market for very plump suckling or weaned Boer kids weighing
approximately 35 to 65 lbs through a farmers’ cooperative in
Vermont. The cooperative received roughly $5.25/lb dressed
carcass from its retailer buyers in 2004. This money is paid
back to farmers minus the slaughtering costs and a marketing
fee of 26% or 22% of carcass price for non-members and members
respectively. Farmers must take care of their own
transportation to the slaughterhouse and there is a severe
penalty for carcasses that dress over 35 lbs. It is assumed in
Table 3 that 70 and 80 lb goats are weaned and have a lower
dressing percentage.
Table 3.
Prices received by farmers through a NE marketing cooperative
after accounting for marketing expenses. Carcass is hide
off/head on, organs hanging.
Value-added products are another
method farmers can use to receive a higher price for their
product. However, heat-and-serve meals and the introduction of
goat meat and processed cuts into large-scale retail grocery
stores requires substantial capital investment. Marketing trim
as sausage is a simpler process but the common incorporation
of pork fat excludes the Muslim or Halal market. Given our
reliable customer base, it is generally important to arrange
Halal certification through the Islamic Food Nutrition Council
of America (IFANCA) if introducing a product over a wide
region.
The amount of capital needed to introduce new or branded
products can often be obtained by a very large producer or a
“new generation” marketing cooperative. Initial funding to
help such cooperatives with their product development may be
available through USDA value-added grants, Sustainable
Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) grants, and state
grants promoting local agriculture. Feasibility studies in
areas where the demand for goat meat has already been
established are probably not cost effective. However, simple
surveys of price sensitivity and testing out what proposed
products are of most interest to focus groups and distributors
is well advised. Rarely does a co-op have the money to discard
one processed product and develop another if investing
initially in the wrong choice of product. Focus groups can be
picked from goat cheese connoisseurs, patrons of upscale
ethnic restaurants featuring lamb and goat, and
representatives of goat-consuming cultures with an interest in
ready-made meals. Coordination is easier if a cooperative
initially forms from a small nucleus of producers that
communicate well together. Extra animals can be purchased from
nonmembers as long as there is a quality assurance program.
The cooperative can be expanded later from this pool of
reliable non-members.
Conclusion
The health of the goat meat industry hinges on our ability to
sustain and expand a strong “cultural” market from our diverse
base of US citizens rather than putting the majority of our
marketing resources into trying to build an overseas export
market. The interest of an increasing portion of the general
public in “ethnic” foods, goat products, lean meats and
farm-fresh product can build upon this strong, already-present
demand.
Anything we can do to make it easier for producers and buyers
to locate each other and arrange necessary market logistics
will help to maintain and expand our meat goat industry.
Regional marketing service directories such as the Marketing
Directory at
http://www.sheepgoatmarketing.info
are crucial, but funding is needed to update and expand them
in a timely manner. Land grant institutions, cooperative
extension staff, and producer associations can help educate
new farmers about market preferences for different ethnic
holidays and advantages and disadvantages of different
marketing channels. Finally, we may need an industry-wide
association focused on goat meat marketing issues. Such an
association could determine how to effectively interact with
the American Sheep Industry Association (ASI) on marketing and
governmental regulations that impact both lamb and meat goat
producers. |
