Grass-Fed Lamb From Exmoor
Woods landlord and local farmer Paddy Groves
Every now and again a journalist gets to sing the praises of something in their own backyard - and on this occasion I can do exactly that when it comes to talking about the wonders of grass-fed meat, which I happen to believe is NOT something that is going to ruin the planet. There were great herds of wild grazing animals roaming the West Country hills long before humans turned up and they did not cause climate change. Indeed, by constantly “mob-grazing” great areas of mainly upland they helped evolve a complex set of plant-life that in turn created deep and complex soil structures full of al manner of microbes and bacteria that helped lock away carbon rather than shove it into the atmosphere.
There are those who call for such a thing to happen again - and I’ll report on that on this website soon.
But a new initiative has started on Exmoor in a bid to promote the national park’s grass-fed lamb - and it is being backed by academics, a famous marketing guru and by a lamb-chop competition which saw local meat being voted best in a blind-tasting this week.
The tasting event was held at Woods wine bar in Dulverton where proprietor Paddy Groves supplied Exmoor lamb raised on his own farm, which was served alongside cuts from Dartmoor, Welsh and Blackdown Hill sheep.
The homegrown chops won after 45 diners had taken part in the blind-tasting, inspiring the chair of the Exmoor National Park Authority, Robin Milton, to comment: “Exmoor lamb has definitely got something going for it. We’ve got to celebrate our landscapes and why they’re here and what they are about.
“These uplands are meat producing regions. This is what we do,” added Mr Milton who is also a local beef and sheep farmer. “We are not very good at growing cereals here because they get blown off these hills. So let’s celebrate what we can do.”
He was being backed in the claim by a leading academic specialising in animal and meat production. Professor Jeff Wood was one of the lead researchers in a project carried out jointly by Bristol and Exeter Universities which studied red meats that had been raised in a variety of agricultural systems.
“The grass-fed came out well in our study in which we looked at beef and lamb produced in a range of pastures throughout Britain - from upland to lowland, from to salt-marsh to all the other variations,” said ProfWood at this week’s Exmoor lamb event.
“We compared the grass-fed to standard produced meat raised on a large proportion of concentrates, and so on. And the grass-fed meat was preferred by all the taste panels - although it was more difficult to pick out a real difference between the types of pastures.
“However, the moorland lamb was the one that came out best,” said the professor, who added: “One of the most important features about the grass-fed product is that you have more omega-3 fatty acids in the meat, because that is in the leafy grass and it gets through to the meat. So you not only get a good tasting product, you also get something which is better for human health as well.”
The research was carried out over a decade ago, so why did Prof Wood think so little had been done to promote grass-fed meat since its results were published?
“I think we have, up to now, been very reticent about making too much between different methods of meat production because we think people feel squeamish when they talk about that. But probably we’ve backed away too much.
“The advantages of grass-fed beef and lamb over feed-lot produced meat are enormous and we should be making a lot more of it than we do,” said the professor.
Marketing guru Robin Wight - the man behind famous campaigns such as the Orange, 118118 and BMW adverts 20 years ago - was one of the organisers of Tuesday night’s event, and he told the WMN: “I was invited by the Exmoor National Park and the hill farmers to help with their Exmoor Ambition project about a post-Brexit strategy for the area.
“I wrote a section about branding Exmoor, which is an incredibly evocative name,” said Mr White. “You can almost taste and eat Exmoor, but it’s never been used as a brand name.
“The major reason for that is under EU regulations all the lamb, for example, west of Bristol, is not allowed to be called Exmoor lamb or Dorset lamb - it is called South West Lamb. Which sounds like a train company.
“There is an incredible opportunity to leverage the power of the Exmoor brand,” said an enthusiastic Mr Wight who has moved to the area from London. “I want to get 100 per can grass-fed Exmoor lamb into a major supermarket. In the South West we have huge leverage - we have amazing produce. And if we are going to create new revenue streams post Brexit - both on Exmoor, or Dartmoor, or in Cornwall - we are going to need to pool resources and come up with the best thinking we have.
“I have been in marketing for the past 40 yeas and have been fortunate enough to lead up some major campaigns - we can use expertise like that here in the Westcountry to help showcase what we’ve got,” said Mr Wight…
After the results of the blind-tasting were announced on Wednesday night, Mr Milton did not look surprised… “The grass-fed approach gives us meat from our landscape,” he said. “Exmoor has probably the finest landscape and also probably the finest lamb and beef.
“So let’s bring people back to recognising the value of our food. What our farming communities do is absolutely integral with our national park purposes as well - without the farmers we don’t have the landscapes people love and enjoy so much.”
Asked about a long-lost initiative triggered 15 years ago to promote Exmoor Horn lamb, Mr Milton commented: “Let’s learn by the mistakes we’ve made in the past. We set about marketing just Exmoor Horn lamb - now we are marketing all Exmoor lamb, which means any lamb reared on grass on Exmoor. That is probably our greatest strength. That is where the Dartmoor farmers have pitched theirs.
“Let’s learn from the lessons of history and make sure we put out what is really great about the area - the taste of upland grass reared lamb.”
He continued: “Probably no antibiotics went anywhere near this lamb. There was a very limited amount of intervention by people We are making the best of a very natural resource. And while we are doing that we are sequestering loads of carbon under our grasslands - which is very important.
“We have a very different climate here from the rest of Devon or Somerset. It rains a heck of a lot. Because it rains, we grow a lot of grass. And that is our greatest value. That ability to grow lamb slowly and come up with a product at the end which allows people to link the landscape to what they eating.
“What I’d like to see is people going into pubs and restaurants and asking for Exmoor lamb - to go in and see it on the menu. Let’s sell the product and the place properly to the people who really want to understand it, rather than sell it simply for a price.
“I have had restaurants and pubs approach me in the past couple of years and ask about Exmoor lamb saying they would sell it if they could always get it . So maybe now is the time,” said Mr Milton. “It is incumbent on the Exmoor farmers, the auctioneers, the hill-farm network and us at the national park… Let us promote what is really great about Exmoor. Let’s give it an identity.”
