Mutton dressed as lamb

Yesterday being easter, looking in the butcher’s window, all I could see was lamb.
Lamb chops, leg of lamb, rack of lamb, lamb noisettes, sides of lamb.
This strikes me as peculiar, because it is Autumn here now; I always thought of lamb being a spring dish.
Where’s the mutton? I asked the butcher about this. He grinned, sheepishly, and showed me red ink markings on the meat, all genuine certified lamb. Mutton has to be stamped differently to show it is mutton. So where is the mutton in his tempting displays of meat? Sorry, he said,he doesn’t have any.
My older recipes books have some wonderful recipes for mutton; I remember the rich aromas and taste in dishes my mother and grandmother cooked. In these days of re-inventing slow cooking and pressure cookers, I would expect mutton could be an economic way to feed a family well.
But no; I looked at the local agricultural newspaper The Land, and saw that mutton on the hoof these days is selling for almost as much as young beef. Why is this so? Perhaps the farmers like to sell lamb more, because they don’t have to spend so long feeding the animals while they grow. Perhaps, also, Australia is sending its quality mutton overseas where buyers have more taste, aren’t so easily fooled by the ‘lamb’ label.
This discovery has me thinking now; why do all the poultry shops and fast food joints sell ‘chicken’. Why can’t we eat more old fowls? When I was a kid, dad would kill the old fowls when they had stopped laying and lunch was great. What’s wrong with eating old roosters/
For that matter, when have you seen butchers advertising “old cow” in their windows. It’s all called yearling beef or veal. I’m sure I have some good recipes for old steer or old bull, if any I don’t have to travel to third world countries to buy it.
It’s food like that that once made this pioneering country great.