AUSTRALIA had its largest year for lamb slaughter in decades last year, driven by the flock’s increasing sheep meat breed focus and seasonal conditions.
The latest quarterly statistics on livestock slaughter and meat production from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and analysis by Meat & Livestock Australia show that 26.6 million lambs were slaughtered in calendar year 2024, the largest number ever.
Sheep slaughter also reached 11.7 million head, the largest since 2006, MLA said.
According to MLA market information manager Stephen Bignell the record slaughter rates are significant for a number of reasons.
“These elevated slaughter rates seen in 2024 are due to a combination of a large national sheep flock with higher percentages of sheep meat breeds being processed, and generally drier conditions seen in South Australia and Victoria,” he said.
Total lamb production for 2024 reached 634,706 tonnes, making it the largest lamb production year on record, 6 percent above 2023 lamb production figures, MLA said.
“In the past two years production has lifted by 18pc.
“This is due to genetic improvements in the flock, but also the demographic shift towards sheep meat and shedding breeds, which is driving fertility and thus leading to productivity gains in the national flock,” Mr Bignell said.
For the previous quarter to December 2024, mutton production hit 90,847 tonnes, which was the largest quarterly sheep production since 1997.
“Across the country towards the end of last year we saw mutton production soar,” Mr Bignell said.
“Favourable prices at the end of the year drove this increase.
“Lamb prices reached $10/kg while mutton was at 300-440c/kg, making it more desirable to process mutton as opposed to lambs for many producers,” he said.
Source – MLA.
Electronic identification is a load of rubbish that is an extra cost and burden on the livestock producers involving expensive tags that are poorly designed.
The extra public servants employed to administer the scheme and conduct audits randomly will only pick up a very small percentage of offenders who jeopardise the survival of the industry. Hence, there are still people running small flocks of animals on contaminated land flying under the inadequate radar.
Anyone can put a tag on an ear of an animal and cut them off and replace it with another one and successfully get through the system without being detected. Tags can also be used for wild goats and sheep that have no records attached and therefore are a threat to the industry from disease contamination etc. thereby jeopardising honest producers.
Bureaucracy is killing the industry and this country with its costs and incompetence.
It’s driven by the liquidation of Western Australia’s sheep flock as people get out of sheep due to government interference, also by the dry conditions in South Australia and Victoria. It has nothing to do with the prices the abattoirs are paying, which in real terms are still only average to below average. The sheep flock will contract sharply in 2026. Western Australia’s sheep industry will lose any economy of scale it once had and become a cottage industry. If you want a healthy national sheep industry repeal the crazy live export laws and vote Labor and the Greens out.
You’re right on the money with your comments. I am in the process of a downsizing of our Merino flock. We will settle at 50-60 percent of 2023 numbers. So by 2026 the amount of ewes available for even a terminal sire to produce this so called transition to fat lambs will be minimal. There will be a dead cat bounce in 2025 as I have heard of some growers buying a 1000 or so ewes and mating them to a terminal sire. This has little or no continuity going forward. All the lambs will have their heads cut off and there will not be a self-supporting flock. So basically the proverbial hits the fan in 2026.