051204 Goat Meat Demand Grows

Fresno, CA - At the Rincon Salvaldoreno, a restaurant where Central American immigrants gather at the end of the workday for a taste of home, goat stew is a brisk seller.

Demand for birria, as it's known, sometimes surpasses menudo, the popular Mexican tripe soup traditionally served on Sundays.

"It's a hard meat to get at the store sometimes, so people buy it here already cooked," said waitress Maribel Bernal. "We make it every day."

As the nation's foreign-born population has grown, so has consumption of the tough, gamey meat popular with Latin American, Caribbean and Muslim communities. There are only about 2 million goats raised in United States for meat, but the domestic market could support a herd of 15 million animals, said Marvin Shurley, president of the American Meat Goat Association.

Demand for the meat has led to a chorus of "Got goat?" that California ranchers are increasingly answering in the affirmative.

Rancher Judy Kaye saw the opportunity in the burgeoning market, and got into the business in 1997 when the taste for goat was taking off. The number of people raising goats jumped 19.5 percent between 1997 and 2002, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Now Kaye has 300 meat goats at her White Rail Ranch south of Porterville, which she sells mostly to small ethnic stores. But she can't meet the demand, and she's been helping other ranchers switch to goats or add them to their herds of sheep and cows.

California's goat herd grew to about 100,000 this year from about 61,000 in 2002, according to the USDA.

The market is expected to continue growing. According to Texas A&M researcher Frank Craddock, demand for goat meat will increase 40 percent by 2007. So most American goat farmers aren't worried about the approximately 18 million tons of imported goat meat from Australia and New Zealand, said Shurley.

Although the meat that comes from overseas is cheap, U.S. farmers have a ready market in communities that know their goat and prefer it fresh, said Robert Swize, executive director of the American Boer Goat Association. The Boer is the leading breed used for meat.

The trend comes as interest increases in other goat products like milk and cheese, which come from a different breed of goat.

The growing number of goat producers also means they can band together and guarantee delivery of fresh meat to the large chain stores, Swize said.

"We have way more consumers than we have goats available," said Shurley, a Texas goat rancher. Texas is the leading goat producing state, followed by Tennessee and California.

Bob Labrucherie, an agriculture teacher at Madera High School, is also betting on goat meat's increasing popularity. He added the animals to the school's farm when he saw the number of goats shown at the state fair had doubled from last year to this one.

He said goats are an easy animal to get started with because they only require a small area. Farmers can raise about 10 to 15 goats in an acre, and they need less equipment than other livestock. Also, goats have about three births in two years, compared to one birth a year for cows.

Although the industry has grown a lot recently, farmers still face some challenges. It's still difficult to find goat-specific feed and veterinarians specialized in treating the animals, Kaye said.

"The goats are fun and playful," said Carrie Robins, a sophomore in Madera High School's agriculture class. "I can't imagine eating them, but I guess a whole lot of people do."

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