'Free-range' labels on lamb don't guarantee animal welfare

Andrea Burgener gives you something to think about when shopping for the ingredients for your Easter lunch

For many celebrating Easter, the Sunday meal means lamb. It feels festive, like a big gesture, but this doesn't necessarily mean lamb has to be a formal, long-cooked roast.

What it should be, though, is well-farmed lamb. While we generally think of this as being free range, those words attached to lamb don't in any way guarantee greater animal welfare. Many free-range farms still use gin traps to catch predators.

It's estimated that a couple of thousand lambs and goats are killed - often horribly - by predators such as caracel, honey badger and leopard every day in South Africa, so farmers are pretty desperate.

But there are other solutions - such as machines that deter predators through sound and smell - and your buying patterns can encourage farmers to use them.

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Certain gin-free farms use Anatolian sheepdogs to guard instead, but it's not a problem-free solution.

Gin traps are banned in about 90 countries, and are gruesomely inhumane. Sometimes, especially on larger farms, traps are checked rarely. Trapped predators (plus non-targeted wild animals) often die of thirst and starvation while others chew their legs off to escape, usually dying subsequently.

Your buying patterns are pretty much the best way to encourage farmers to seek better alternatives, as some are doing, so make your butcher or supermarket keenly aware of why you are or aren't buying the meat.

If you managed to hang onto your appetite through that lot, here follows one of the most delicious flavourings for lamb I've had in a long time.

It comes from Salma Hage's fantastic book The Lebanese Kitchen.

While she files it under Lamb Schwarma, the effect doesn't feel specifically schwarma-like. We made skewers instead, and cooked it on the braai.

LEBANESE LAMB SKEWERS

Makes: 4

Ingredients:

Cut 350g lamb leg or loin into 4cm or 5cm cubes and salt liberally all over.

Marinade:

1 tsp seven spices seasoning, which is made up of the following, all mixed together: 5 tbsp ground allspice, 3 tbsp pepper, 3 tbsp ground cinnamon, 4 tbsp ground cloves, 4 tbsp ground nutmeg, 4 tbsp ground fenugreek, 4 tbsp ground ginger.

½ tbsp ground cumin

2 tsp dried mint

Pinch paprika

Juice of ½ lemon

Method:

1) Place cubed lamb with all other ingredients into a glass or ceramic bowl and let it marinade for at least an hour.

2) Thread onto metal skewers or wooden ones which have been soaked in water to prevent them catching alight on the braai.

3) Cook on the braai over medium coals, basting with the marinade. Remove when medium-rare. Leave to rest, covered, for 10 minutes.

4) Eat with full-cream yoghurt or tzatziki and something salad-y.

• This article was originally published in The Times.