Recent studies on the production and marketability of sheep meat in Greece have shown that response of the small ruminant sector to changing consumer demands has been to produce consistently larger and leaner lambs all year round. Moreover, purchases of such meat are likely to favour less exploitative systems of production (Zygoyiannis et al. 1999). The idea is that such systems should constitute more environmentally and economically sustainable options. The objective of the current study was to investigate the potential of developing sustainable systems of sheep and goat meat production that are less depended on pharmaceutical control of gastrointestinal parasitism without comprising the quality of produced meat.