Scottish auctioneers are attributing a 20% uplift in liveweight lamb prices in Scottish auction marts during November to the industry’s annual Lamb for St Andrew’s Day campaign.
The initiative by the Institute of Auctioneers and Appraisers in Scotland (IAAS) saw lambs and money donated to the Lamb Bank, which resulted in cuts of lamb being delivered to more than 18,000 secondary school pupils to cook, eat and celebrate the patron saint’s day on November 30.
The long-term vision of the campaign is to inspire future generations of customers to choose to cook and eat lamb, but IAAS executive director Neil Wilson insisted there was a short-term gain too.
He said: “This clearly demonstrates the impact of the campaign on improving liveweight lamb prices in Scotland during the month of November and shows how a whole industry getting behind a focused campaign can help us all promote our product and support prices at a critical time of the year.
“By promoting lamb and sheep meat products at a time when we see a seasonal rise in supply, we are also stimulating demand. The benefit of this is that we can help support the farmgate prices through the auction ring at this time of year.”
In 2022, the Lamb Bank received donations from sheep farmers and the wider industry and IAAS worked with 43 independent butchers, spending just over £30,000 with them, to process, pack and deliver to schools across Scotland.
Mr Wilson added: “I’d like to thank all the farmers and our auctioneer members who generated donations to our Lamb Bank, to enable this tangible engagement with school pupils, and to the butchers who worked around the clock to process, pack and deliver.
“I’d like to give a particular mention to Woodhead Brothers in Turriff, who donated lamb for 1880 Aberdeenshire school children, which was kindly delivered by G&M Whyte, and to Shetland Livestock Marketing Group, who covered all of the Shetland schools and their 160 pupils.”
