This is a great way of addressing concerns about where food comes from and how it is produced. I have actually lost many a sale of lamb because people ask only “is it organic” and shut down when the answer is “no.” After studying the organic production standards and trying them for a year or two, I decided that strict adherence to the standards — the only kind that’s allowed — was inhumane in my climate.

The primary place where organic sheep production falls down in the Northeast is parasite control. Like Lynn Mordas, I adopted several strategies to limit my use of deworming medicines, but I still felt that to abandon them entirely was to condemn my sheep to lives of nutritional deprivation, stress, disease and death. So my lamb is not organic, but it is raised under the most humane, healthful conditions that I can offer using the least medicine I can.

However, I think that many prospective buyers ask if the product is organic and when I tell them it is not, they assume that it is raised on a diet of antibiotics and hormones in a feedlot up to its belly in its own dung and urine. Not organic does not mean not healthy; thank you for pointing that out.