People do eat sheep, just not very much in the United States. Americans consume roughly 1 pound of lamb and mutton per person per year, down from nearly 5 pounds in the 1960s. Compare that to the 50-plus pounds of beef and over 60 pounds of chicken the average American eats annually, and sheep meat barely registers. The real question isn’t whether people eat sheep at all, but why it virtually disappeared from American plates while remaining a staple in much of the world.
World War II Killed America’s Taste for Mutton
In the early 1900s, mutton was standard fare at high-end restaurants. Keens Steakhouse in New York had 237 menus featuring mutton during that era. Then came World War II, and with it one of the stranger food-culture shifts in American history.
U.S. soldiers were fed canned Australian mutton as part of their wartime rations, and by all accounts it was terrible. Bob Kennard, author of Much Ado About Mutton, describes veterans who came home and refused to allow sheep meat in the house. They never wanted to see it again. As Keens Steakhouse manager Bonnie Jenkins puts it: “After World War II, people were celebrating. They were forced to eat mutton during war time and they wanted to get away from it. You don’t see it on menus in the 1950s and ’60s.” Few foods have ever suffered such a dramatic public relations collapse from a single historical event.
The Wool Industry’s Decline Dragged Meat Down With It
For most of American history, sheep farming was primarily about wool. Meat was a profitable byproduct. When synthetic fibers started taking over the textile market, the economic logic of raising sheep fell apart.
Synthetic fabrics first appeared in the 1880s, but their real impact came in the mid-20th century. Today wool accounts for roughly 1% of the global textile fiber supply, and its share has been cut in half over just the past 20 years. Wool costs four to seven times more to produce and process than synthetic fibers or cotton, pushing it into a luxury niche. With wool no longer driving profits, fewer ranchers kept sheep. Fewer sheep meant less meat reaching grocery stores, which meant consumers had even less reason to buy it. The cycle fed on itself.
Cattle Have a Built-In Economic Advantage
Sheep are smaller and less efficient to raise at industrial scale compared to cattle. A cow and calf consume about 28 pounds of forage per day, while a ewe and lamb eat around 5 pounds. That sounds like sheep are cheaper to feed, but the math flips when you look at how much meat you get back. Roughly 6 to 7 sheep equal one cow in terms of the land and resources they require, yet a single steer produces far more meat than six lambs. Sheep also consume about 20% more forage per pound of body weight than cattle do.
The American beef industry, meanwhile, scaled up aggressively after World War II, building massive feedlots and distribution networks that made beef cheap and widely available. The chicken industry followed a similar path. Lamb never got that kind of infrastructure investment, so it stayed expensive and hard to find, a specialty item rather than an everyday protein.
Lamb vs. Mutton: A Flavor Problem
Sheep meat is categorized by the animal’s age. Lambs still have their baby teeth and produce mild, tender meat. Yearlings have one set of permanent teeth and a slightly stronger flavor. Older sheep, sometimes called “solid mouth” at four to six years old, produce what’s traditionally labeled mutton, with a much more intense, gamey taste.
That gamey flavor is what most Americans associate with sheep meat, largely because of those wartime cans of old mutton. Young lamb actually tastes quite mild and is closer to veal in tenderness. But the cultural memory of bad mutton created a blanket aversion to all sheep meat. Most Americans who say they don’t like lamb have never actually tried a properly prepared young lamb chop.
Much of the World Eats Plenty of Sheep
The American avoidance of sheep meat is a cultural outlier. Mongolians eat a staggering 68 kilograms (about 150 pounds) of lamb and mutton per person each year, rooted in centuries of pastoral herding tradition. Bahrain, Turkmenistan, Chad, and Tonga round out the top five consuming nations, each averaging 18 to 23 kilograms per person annually.
Sheep meat is a daily protein source across the Middle East, including Jordan, Iran, and Afghanistan. It features heavily in Mediterranean cooking in Turkey, Greece, and Croatia. Australians consider roasted leg of lamb their national dish. In these regions, sheep thrive on landscapes poorly suited for cattle, grazing on sparse, hilly, or arid terrain. The animals fit the geography, so they became the dominant meat. In the vast American plains and Midwest, cattle made more economic sense, and that geographic advantage shaped an entire food culture.
Why Lamb Stays Expensive in the U.S.
Walk into an American grocery store and lamb will cost roughly twice as much per pound as beef, sometimes more. Part of that is simple supply and demand. The U.S. sheep flock has been shrinking for decades, and domestic production can’t meet even the modest demand that exists. About half the lamb Americans eat is imported, mostly from Australia and New Zealand, adding shipping costs to the price.
There’s also a processing bottleneck. The U.S. has relatively few slaughterhouses equipped to handle sheep compared to the massive infrastructure built around cattle, hogs, and poultry. Fewer processing facilities mean higher costs per animal, which get passed along to consumers. High prices keep demand low, and low demand discourages investment in the supply chain. It’s a self-reinforcing loop that has kept lamb a niche product for decades.
Where Sheep Meat Is Making a Quiet Comeback
Lamb consumption in the U.S. has stabilized around that 1-pound-per-person mark rather than continuing to fall. Immigration from regions where lamb is a dietary staple, particularly the Middle East, South Asia, and East Africa, has created steady demand in urban areas. Restaurants focused on Mediterranean, Indian, and Middle Eastern cuisine have reintroduced many Americans to well-prepared lamb.
Grass-fed lamb has also found a foothold in the same market that embraced pasture-raised beef and free-range poultry. Sheep are well suited to small-scale, sustainable farming because they can graze on land too rough for crops. Some farmers raising lamb for direct sale to consumers and restaurants have carved out a viable business, even if it remains tiny compared to the beef or poultry industries.