SC - RE: Hardly Anyone eats lamb...???

[Decker, Terry D.]

>I don't know if anyone has addressed this part of the issue (and forgive
>me if I'm repeating something somebody else has already said), but there
>seems to be a perfectly understandable reason why some parts of the
>U.S.A., and the world overall, may have localized sociological aversions
>to lamb. Or, for that matter, various other animal foods for similar
>reasons.
>
>Haven't you guys ever seen those old Westerns where the cattle herders
>look down upon the sheep herders, and vice versa? I know it wasn't
>"Shane": that involved generic sodbusters versus ranchers, and my lady
>wife, my usual authority on such matters, is drawing a blank at the
>moment.

Shane was a farm and ranch shot-em-up replete with the mythos of the
American West.  I tend to take such movies with a salt shaker, since
most range wars were very localized affairs and more often concerned
political power than land use.
 
>In any case, it occurs to me that the residents of an area where beef
>cattle production is one of the primary industries, might not take
>kindly to the ecological effects sheep-raising would have on land they'd
>like to devote to cattle ranching, and a deep distrust of all matters
>ovine might result. This could account for lamb and mutton aversion in
>places like Texas and Oklahoma. By extension, you might find similar
>feelings in midwestern cities like Chicago, which still has a lot of
>beef being processed and/or marketed there.

Texas and Oklahoma were bison country which was taken over by cattle as
the bison were killed off.  Very few sheep were raised in these states
until recently.  Most of the big ranches in Oklahoma were run on leased
tribal land.  Many of these disappeared when the land was parceled out
in the Land Runs.    

New Mexico has always been strong on pastores.  In 1854 (?), Dick Wooten
profitably drove several large flocks of sheep from NM to California.
The estancias ran both cattle and sheep.  After the Civil War, Texas
cattlemen moved into southeastern NM in the Pecos and Rio Hondo country,
but there was no major problems between sheep and cattle. 

Arizona has had some sheep and cattle problems, but they were mostly
continuations of feuds which did not concern stock.

Colorado and Idaho were mostly mining interests and grazing was of
secondary importance.  The terrain also provided niches for both sheep
and cattle and a certain amount of natural buffering.

Wyoming's big fight was between the small ranchers and the large
ranchers (which if I remember correctly is the alleged setting for
Shane).  Montana was similar being between large stock interests and
small ranchers and farmers (this one involved Teddy Roosevelt and Tom
Horn).

Utah was Morman and the problems were more between Mormans, non-Mormans,
and the Federal government, than about stock.  

The state most prominent in the sheep/cattle dispute was Nevada.  The
land is very marginal, water is scarce, and much of the land belongs to
the Feds.  
Basque sheepherders moved onto the Federal land in direct competition
with ranchers, who had homesteaded some of the better water sources, but
didn't own much of the land they grazed.     
 
>Similarly, in the American Southeast, where cotton has been a major
>industry for hundreds of years, the large-scale raising of wool-bearing
>animals may have been similarly discouraged.

Farmers tend to grow what will sell.  Tobbaco and cotton were cash crops
for export to England.  Exporting wool would probably have been a losing
proposition.  And England certainly didn't encourage people in its
colonies to produce their own wool and ruin the market for English
woolens.  Even after the Revolution, tobacco and cotton were more
valuable.

Historically, the eastern US has never been suited for major grazing.
It was originally prime forest, inhabited by various predators that made
stock raising difficult.  Most crops were garden patches for food and
acreages for export.  Urbanization and steady popluation growth made
cleared land more valuable for food crops than livestock.  

Stock raising moved into the newly opened lands west of the mountains,
stock having the advantage of being able to walk to market rather than
requiring transportation, but had slow growth again due to the prime
forest.  Stock drives to the east coast were hazardous, but were very
profitable if successfully delivered to market.  Pigs apparently were
the most common stock, providing the fastest turn-over and the highest
profit for the least expense.

By the mid-1800s, population growth on the east coast had outstripped
the capacity of the stock raising operations to feed the people.  But a
transcontinental railroad and a bunch of broke Texans with a herd of
ownerless cattle converged on Sedalia, Missouri in 1865 and kick started
the US cattle industry.  


>Now, what people need to realize that it's perfectly understandable (if
>not reasonable, if you know what I mean) to have aversions to foods you
>have never personally encountered. Many people who hate liver have never
>actually tasted it, and in some cases have never seen it, except in the
>form of pet food. My father grew up with a deep suspicion and distrust
>of mutton, which he had never eaten. My mother was effectively not
>allowed to cook lamb for us, since any enjoyment of it would be
>impossible in the face of the old guy's grouching on the subject. It
>turns out that at the turn of the twentieth century or thereabouts, some
>U.S. Marines were deployed in China to help put down the Boxer
>Rebellion. My grandfather was among them, and when he returned home, it
>was via an extremely slow transport ship. Due to some kind of error in
>the provisioning of the ship, my grandpa was fed mutton at virtually
>every meal, for a period of months. He never ate lamb or mutton again,
>and would not allow it in his presence. 
>
>As a result, my father grew up secure in the knowledge that lamb was a
>Bad Thing, and also banned it from his table until the day my mom bought
>and roasted a leg of lamb and served it, without mentioning that it was
>not, in fact, beef. This may have been the origin of the "Don't Ask,
>Don't Tell" policy, and it worked successfully for quite a while. He
>finally found out what was happening years later, by which time he had
>to admit he'd grown to like the stuff.
>
>Adamantius
>troy at asan.com

Ah, the truth will out -- military chow as aversion therapy.  My father
disliked chicken for a similar reason and a friend of mine who is a
Vietnam Vet hates rice because his outfit was getting about 10 lbs per
day per man (rice for every meal and more.  His tale of the rice-filled
sandbags in the Monsoon is a riot.)

If you want to have people swear off hamburgers, have them try the ones
that come in C-rations.  Thin hockey pucks embalmed in croton oil.

Bear
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