We Used To Do It So Well - We Can Again!

I grew up in the Welsh Borders. Surrounded by Hereford and Welsh Black cattle, sheep of all breeds, and woodland full of deer, pheasants, hares and rabbits.

The local butcher would select his own beef and lamb 'on the hoof' at the local market, process it at his local abattoir, and fill his windows with spectacular local produce. The whole animal was utilised, waste was minimalised, every cut presented beautifully, testimony to exceptional farming practice, skilled butchery, and thought behind every part of the process.

The pubs and restaurants menus would generally be full of produce that had real and genuine local provenance, including trout and salmon from the local rivers. The only thing that had to be shipped in was seafood. But living two hours from the nearest coast, that was of course inevitable!

If I'm honest, at that point in my life, I never thought about that provenance. It was just there, because it always had been, it was subconsciously expected.

When I talk to some of my older customers, butchers now retired, and farmers with long memories, a very similar situation occurred here in New Zealand.

For most meat eaters here now, that is most certainly no longer the case.

Meat at the supermarket, and most butcheries has become anonymous. It is a commodity product, produced for offshore market places who remain detached from any form of provenance other than a country of origin. Quality can become a rollercoaster, and butchery skill and technique marginalised as the meat works model places the emphasis on speed and efficiency, not utilisation and presentation.

My biggest gripe is a grading system set up to fulfil the demands of those offshore marketplaces, not to focus on a top quality product from a butchery and domestic market point of view. Farmers here are penalised financially for beef with anything more than 11mm of fat over the rib. Trust me, that is not a lot of fat to work with, and I believe the product seen in the supermarkets and majority of butcheries in New Zealand is well below the quality it could be as a result. This is not the farmers fault. Their role is to fulfil the demands of the big meat processors who are export driven, and to gain the maximum return from their cattle. I would respectfully suggest that they are being financially penalised for finishing cattle properly!

So at Heritage Meat, we are not reinventing the wheel, more winding back the clock. I continue to develop those same relationships my predecessors had with the very best farmers, and often have the privilege of seeing their stock in the paddock. I am able to assess stock that is properly 'finished', with confidence that the end product will be of the highest quality as a result.

My team can take that beautiful meat and refine it into a product range that has both real points of difference, and a beautiful food story. I look forward over the next few months to telling those farmer and food stories.

Know and understand your meat. Eat with confidence, eat with intention.