THE US market for lamb attracts plenty of attention and rightly so, as it is Australia's biggest lamb customer.

Its demands have been one of the driving forces in shifting the lamb industry to a bigger, leaner carcass suitable to cut a number of different ways.

But when you are talking about the fastest-growing market, then the Middle East North Africa takes the mantle.

This year, close to 23 per cent of total lamb exports will go to the Middle East, making it our second-biggest customer.

The MENA market for Australian lamb is growing at more than 28 per cent a year, figures that most other businesses could only dream of.

And few may know that Australia's second-biggest single customer for lamb behind the US, if you are talking about specific countries, is the United Arab Emirates, a country of less than five million people.

What makes the Australian mutton and lamb sent to these destinations different is not only the high quality, but also the cut usage.

While there is a great deal of preparation of carcasses sent to the US and even the domestic market, the lamb and mutton sent to the Middle East is a whole different story.

Blair Brice is Meat and Livestock Australia's manager for trade services for the Middle East and Africa, as well as managing the global Halal programs for the organisation.

He travels extensively throughout the region several times a year, and it's fair to say he has a good grip on what goes on.

And that assessment shows 54 per cent of the mutton and 58 per cent of the lamb sent to the Middle East is as an entire carcass.

Also of significance is that almost 60 per cent of the lamb carcasses are sent chilled, ready for use in local butchers, supermarkets, and restaurants.

Largely, this is due to the way it is used. For mutton, it is predominantly put into wet cooking (stews, casseroles). Lamb is also wet cooked, however, a large proportion is grilled.

Whole carcasses are sometimes roasted, too.

The end use, of course, determines how the buyers like to receive the meat, but there is also an element of knowing what you are buying, according to Mr Brice.

The Middle Eastern markets prefer a smaller carcass.

As sheep production trends towards meat rather than wool, Mr Brice acknowledges it will increase the pressure to educate the market on the benefits of larger lambs. This will allow for more lamb to be directed to the growing MENA market

According to Mr Brice, Middle Eastern buyers can't "comprehend the potential size of an Australian lamb".

"I think they suspect that some of our lambs might actually be mutton!" he said.

When the buyers in the Middle East get a carcass, they know they are getting the entire animal.

But if cuts are sent, there has been historically some suspicion that the buyer might not be getting the best cuts.

Mr Brice puts it more elegantly.

"They want the smaller carcass to reassure them that they are getting what they pay for," he said.

And that is fair enough.

It is this trust issue that the MLA is keen to work on, especially in a market which is growing so quickly.

They are working with buyers and customers in the Middle East, promoting different ways of cutting meat to get a better utilisation from a carcass.

For the caterers to the burgeoning construction trade in the region, such an advance in the way they buy and use mutton could be very valuable.

Right now, they buy the whole carcass and pay an average price for all the cuts as a whole carcass, rather than higher prices for the better cuts and a lower price for the secondary cuts. Similar to other more developed markets such as the US and Australia, the goal is to extract the best value from the entire carcase.

"We are running education campaigns, to show that not all the mutton or lamb carcasses needs to be sliced and diced," Mr Brice said.

"The challenge for MLA is to work with the market, to drill down into specific requirements, and then show how these can be met."

It may take a while for mutton, which is still considered not only a low-cost protein source but a preferred one too.

Mutton is mostly sent into the Middle East as a six-way cut, as the AUSMEAT diagram on this page shows.

Here, the carcass is divided into the hindquarter, forequarter, and saddle, which are all split down the back bone, which portions the carcass into six cuts. Legs and shoulders are the popular cuts due to the volume of meat in these cuts.

Even with a market dominated by whole carcass trade, there seems to be an insatiable demand for Australian lamb and mutton in the Middle East.

This demand has been sustained despite the strength of the Australian dollar and the high prices for both lamb and mutton in the past year, but particularly this year.

It was always dangerous to depend on just one export market. Thankfully, the Australian sheep industry can now know there are two major world players out there who want our product.