Meet the EU Lamb
Sheep meat is a category of meat with distinctive features and a long production tradition in the E uropean continent, composing a great variety of production systems and animal breeds, which evolved in their natural environment in the passage of time and constituted an important aspect of economic, social, dietary and cultural life in Europe.
Today, the EU-27 ranks high globally with respect to production, since the average annual production of sheep meat in the three years 2017 -2019 amounted to 647 thousand tons.
European lamb means European cultural heritage, because lamb has been in man’s life for about ten thousand years, since sheep were among the first animals to be domesticated by humans. Apart from its meat, which has been always considered a valuable food, its milk, wool and skin played an important role in the development of economy and trade in ancient civilizations.
Lamb has been known through Greek mythology and is frequently mentioned in the Homeric epics, while in earlier years’ lamb was the official food for feasts and important gatherings.
Raising sheep in Europe and the link between reproductive systems and maintaining vegetation through a sustainable process is an advantage for less favorable areas, particularly in the Mediterranean Basin, as it helps preserve the cultural wealth and traditions of entire regions with specific social activities.
The lamb meat is an integral part of the nutritional heritage of the Mediterranean with a consequence of the important production of the South of the European Union, where Greece and Cyprus rank second, occupying the largest share of total European production.