The Outdoor Gibbon
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The Outdoor Gibbon
67 The Big Venison Delusion: Can wild Venison ever go mainstream? Stalkingshow 2025 BDS panel day two
Why does venison remain a niche product despite its impeccable ethical and environmental credentials? The Stalking Show 2025 brought together a diverse panel of experts to tackle this persistent market paradox and explore solutions to bring wild venison into mainstream consumption.
From the opening moments, it becomes clear that the venison market faces multifaceted challenges. Game dealers like Tristan Kirk explain how logistical complexities and processing costs create pricing pressures that ripple through the supply chain. Unlike cattle operations where transport and processing achieve economies of scale, venison collection involves numerous small pickups from chillers across the country, dramatically increasing operational costs per kilogram.
Quality standards emerge as the critical factor for mainstream market acceptance. David Hooten presents the British Quality Wild Venison scheme, designed to address buyer concerns about traceability and handling between the field and processing. Simon Gibson, representing major hospitality buyers, confirms these concerns are legitimate – chefs worry about what happens before the carcass reaches approved handlers, creating hesitation about featuring venison on mainstream menus.
Education plays a pivotal role in expanding venison's market reach. José Suto shares his groundbreaking work at Westminster Kingsway College, where he's integrated comprehensive venison education throughout the culinary curriculum, even establishing the UK's only deer larder in a catering college. His approach positions venison as the "fourth meat" alongside beef, chicken, and lamb, with graduates taking this knowledge into professional kitchens nationwide.
The Open Food Network offers a promising distribution solution, creating a free registration service that maps venison sellers and connects them directly with buyers. This platform particularly benefits smaller producers and helps solve distribution challenges for smaller deer species that don't fit well in traditional game dealer supply chains.
Perhaps most compelling is venison's environmental advantage. When major hospitality venues like Celtic Manor discover that beef consumption represents their largest carbon footprint contributor – exceeding even energy usage – substituting venison becomes an attractive sustainability strategy.
Whether you're a stalker, chef, retailer, or simply a curious consumer, this discussion illuminates the path forward for this underappreciated, sustainable protein. Join us in exploring how coordinated improvements in quality, distribution, and awareness could finally help venison realize its mainstream potential.
Subscribe to hear more perspectives on sustainable food systems and wildlife management that benefit both ecosystems and communities alike.
Hello and welcome along again to the Outdoor Gibbon podcast. Again, it's a slightly different format as this show was recorded at the Stalking Show 2025 for the BDS. This was the panel, the second panel to run, and they were on Sunday, april the 13th, between 1 and 2. And it was the big venison delusion. Could venison ever go mainstream? The topic was despite venison being ethical and sustainable credentials, venison remains a niche product. The panel investigates the opportunities and the barriers to bringing venison to the mass market. Can we overcome the misconception about the accessibility and versatility?
Speaker 2:The panel was made up of Jose Suto, a professional stalker, chef, author and lecturer. Tristan Kirk, director of Linkature Game. Nick Ware, the community's facilitator of the Open Food Network. David Hooten, representing the British Quality Wild Venison. Nick Rout, britishish deer society and an independent registered food business and representative. And finally simon gibson, ceo of celtic manor. I must apologize again for the audio quality at some points. I will drop in a sort of an overview because I think some questions were asked in the audience and the audience member didn't have a microphone, so you'll get me coming a few times with their questions, but hopefully have a good listen and if it raises any questions we'll tell you how to get in touch at the end degree.
Speaker 3:So we have seven hotels in the group, including the celtic manor which many of you may know in south wales, the international convention center and 15 restaurants. So that equates to 150 chefs and we buy 9 million pounds of food a year. So I'm sitting here really in the guise of a buyer. So my participation on the panel today will be to talk about what concerns us as buyers and how do we reach scale so that we can provide food for, say, a typical convention center dinner where there's 2,000 diners, and is that possible to do that on a regular basis with Vansit? So hopefully I can help the discussion a lot.
Speaker 4:Hello, I'm Nick Rout. That's weird that noise behind you, isn't it? I'm Nick Rout. I'm head of education and training for the British Deer Society, so I look at how we train people in supplying game meat hygiene, hygienically and safely. I'm also a small food business in my own right. I've got my own business, which I've registered to supply locally, and I also sit on the working group that comes together and helps advise the food standards agency as to how to do things, or we try to advise the food standards agency how to do things.
Speaker 5:Thank you. I'm David Hoosen. I'm the Forestry Commission East of East and East Midlands Deer Officer. I've had an interest in wild venison for many years now. I helped chair the East Midlands Wild Venison Project back 2010-2014 and currently I'm very involved in the British Quality Wild Venison Standard. The standards are designed to help and support the food sector.
Speaker 6:Hello, I'm Tristan Kirk, Director of Lincolnshire Game Limited. We supply retail across the UK and we export abroad Venison and Gamebirds.
Speaker 7:Hi, I'm Jose Suto. I'm Senior Chef Lecturer at Westminster Kingsway College uh game chef, I suppose and basically doing all the demos uh, and the other side uh stalker and sort of lifetime bought into the whole of this industry and have a great passion for it. Um, unlike a lot of other chefs, I'm very different in the fact that basically, it makes me no more money whether I sell one venison steak or 10 venison steaks. My thing has always been about education, educating the chefs of tomorrow about how to use stuff and also the general public and help everybody.
Speaker 8:Hello, I'm Nick Weir. I'm part of the Open Food Network, which is an organisation trying to build short food supply chains, getting the food direct from the people who are producing it to the people who are eating it. I'm here as part of the Wild Venison Network, which is a joint venture between the Open Food Network and the BDS, and what we're trying to do is to create a map and a directory with anybody who has venison for sale and then promote that directory to the mainstream, whether that's schools, hospitals, supermarkets, whoever.
Speaker 9:And just on that, hopefully you've all seen, there's a QR code and literally it's brilliant. You can register on the World Venison Network. It doesn't cost you anything. But I do think this is one of the solutions, of the myriad of solutions that we're going to have to provide collectively to help us sell more venison. But I think just to sort of set the tone, solutions that we're going to have to provide collectively to help us sell more venison. But I think just to sort of set the tone. And Tristan, I'm going to pick on you for the first question, but you know, as the only AGHE rep on our panel, and I'm sure you know what's coming next you know we all sit here producing venison and then complaining. I think it'd be great to hear from your side why our price is, as we say, too low. What's the reality?
Speaker 6:Okay, so I'm probably not going to be the most popular person on here, but just from our point of view, obviously we have to deal with a lot of different quality of venison that comes through the door. We have to collect it from chillers in our own vehicles, which is incredibly expensive, and we do a lot of mileage all over the country. Oh sorry, is that better? Yeah, and then so collecting with our own vehicles from all over the country, from everybody's chillers, which makes us not competitive with the likes of cattle and things like that, where you can fill an articulated lorry and send it from one end of the country to the other for probably the same price as we can send two vans to pick up 20% or 10% of an articulated lorry's worth.
Speaker 6:We have an awful not an awful lot of wastage. We try not to get as much wastage as possible, but we can sell the skins, which you can with the cattle. We can't sell hard bones, particularly so we do have wastage there. And then of course there's the shop points, which is part of the wastage, and inevitably there's only so much somebody will pay for venison at the other end of the scale. Um, so as much as we can try and hike our prices into the stores to try and get a better price for a stalker. Eventually you you reach that limit and then you won't be able to sell it um, thanks, christen.
Speaker 9:Um, hopefully that answers a question that I'm sure lots of people ask. Can we do? We'll do questions. There's going to be questions at the end. Give you time. So, jose, a question for you Are you seeing from the chefs you're training, is there an understanding from them of the benefits of venison and game? I think, if it works, yeah, um, and are you seeing the ones that you have trained going out into their careers using more game because they understand the benefits of it?
Speaker 7:yes, and that that's a lot of it. I mean mean, if you look at some of the guys I mean some of the guys that I've trained have been on things like Gretbridge Menu You've seen Venison on there. Some of the guys that I've trained have been on MasterChef and stuff like that. If you look at the things like the Craft Guild of Chefs not last year but the year before, venison was the main course on the National Chef of the Year, not last year but the year before Venison was the main course on the National Chef of the Year For the graduate awards I set the task of basically the butchery breaking down of a haunch of venison for that.
Speaker 7:So, and what I've tried to do is over the last I mean I've been there, where I am, it finds me to say, for 20 years there and in those 20 years what I've tried to do, with the help of Simon and Tristan from Linkage Game, is we've tried to position game in venison and as a meat that all of our students understand and we did that right at the beginning of the third years and where we, every single one of my third years, has development class and it's pretty much a mini um deerstalking certificate, much a mini deerstalking certificate and right through from the animal, the shot placement, what happens, the bleeding, everything, all right, all of that basically set in and then sorry from that. And so what we've tried to do that I've done that for 20 years with the help, with the help of these guys, yeah, and these guys are doing it off their own back, basically helping me out to do that and I convinced my college to buy a deer larder. I am the only college in the uk, catering college in the uk, that has its own deer larder. We put 15 to 20 animals through that deer larder every year. That might not sound like a lot but for a catering college it is because basically there is no other catering college in the uk that's doing that. And all of these guys that are in in that 20 years we had sort of 80 to 90 of these third years are going out with a mass knowledge of venison. So basically, venison and game birds, you know, and being put in on the menus started to work with it with venison.
Speaker 7:Now what we've done? We've gone to the extent where our first years use it. So basically you have a three-year course the first, second and third years use it. First years use it one of their synoptic exams, so I've placed it as that. I've written the exams for them, I've done all of the theory for them so they understand what a deer is as basic as that. In the second year they start to understand about different species. In the third year they have that mini dcs. Why would I which I do before. So what we've tried to do is position venison as the fourth mate, and that's been with these guys help, you know, to be able to do that, and we we are. Over the years we've had lots and lots of students that have then gone in to using venison, breaking down their own carcasses and working with venison, putting it onto plates, yeah, and using that. So there is an uptake.
Speaker 9:There is an uptake on it, and I mean just sort of following on from that.
Speaker 3:I mean, simon, as a buyer of venison, um, and maybe as an employer of some of jose's students, be interesting to hear your key jose has been doing a fantastic job raising awareness, but I think where we need a little help, jose, is you training the trainers, not just the chefs. There's far too few culinary colleges doing what you're doing, so if we could get more of you scattered around the country.
Speaker 7:Well, if I can just answer that country. Well, well, if I can just answer that. So, basically, last year what we tried to do is um, we do two game seminars a year where we invite, uh, anybody, anyone could be stalkers, it could be chefs. A lot of the chefs use it for their um cpd with us. And we do these seminars where in the first half in the morning again sponsored by simon tristan they've done it for 20 years in the first half of the morning we cover all of the game birds and the preparation of game birds and their background, history, portions, preparation, everything. Then we have a lunch downstairs which is basically also sponsored by them and includes a three-course meal. And then they come back up and I've got one of each deer species hanging right so they can see this, which and I go through each of the deer species with the given their background, as well as doing again a mini, uh, this sort of certificate. They're explaining everything to them and then I break down a whole carcass.
Speaker 7:Now, last year, um, we did offer with basp, basically for, because they're doing this, um, they do this competition, basically it's a canopy competition for the e-game awards. So I said to bask is that what we'll do is, if we can, if I will offer you free places for lecturers from around the country. All you need to do is help them get here, and I think the message got a bit missed because we didn't end up with as many lecturers there as we could have done and a few of the lecturers didn't know that that's going to pay for their, their travel, and so I think we missed a chance there and I'm perfectly prepared to work with anybody to do that again, to make that offer, to do it for free for them, to get those guys in to learn about what we're doing, to see how we've positioned what we've done. I'm even prepared to basically do a whole day seminar just for lecturers explaining what we've done, how we've done it, so they can import it into their own, into their own places, because, yeah, we, we use simon tristan a lot, but out in other places you know other parts of the country they'll have game dealers that they can work with as well, and and stalkers, as you said, you know in your network which they can deal with now we.
Speaker 7:But what these guys need to remember this is these are an educational facility you've got to understand right, look at the deer that you're sending in, right, you know it's all about headshot stuff, right? Because basically you cannot send the deer in shot in the head basically for an educational thing. Number one it'll terrify the kids because basically, look and go, jeez, what happened to that? You know we understand all of that, but they don't. So you just got to look at the way that you send it in so that they basically have a great experience and a great story of the background and the provenance of that product to then be able to say, oh god, this is great, I need to use this and the reason why I love the idea of the fourth meet?
Speaker 3:because if you have a convention customer like a large corporate or government agency come and they want to set up a big conference, thousands of people attend, there's always three choices and you know what they are they're chicken, they're beef and they're lamb. And pork's never served for obvious reasons. There's all sorts of difficulties with that. And fish is awkward, but venison could be a really great. Fourth product is awkward, but venison could be a really great. Fourth product.
Speaker 3:Um, what our executive team told me they needed was and we can talk about whether this is even possible they want quality, they want traceability, they want, uh, quantity, and what they mean by that is consistent supplier. It's no good ringing out one week and you've got a big conference coming in and you've persuaded the client that you you're gonna serve venison to 3 000 people and then everyone says about no venison in the supply chain. That's a disaster. Um and um, you know. The other issue is the chefs are nervous. I can tell you that they're nervous about traceability. They're nervous about what happens between the shot point and getting to the, the dealer. How long has that carcass been on the ground? Has it been dragged? Has it been hung on a fence for a couple of hours, you know? Because for a chef that's absolutely never going to hit a plate. We can supply venison all day long, but if there's something wrong with that venison, you're not going to get sued, we're going to get sued.
Speaker 7:Well, if I can just sort of answer that and I'm going to hand over Tristan as well with this, because Tristan will basically give the background on it when you were those customers that are worried about that there are three game dealers in the UK that have brc accreditations, basically for supplying for retailers. So leakage game is one of them, uh, highland game is the other one and the other one's ben rimby. When it comes to reba tell, ben's not really interested in doing retail, he sees him as a pay, all right. And now the other two guys basically work with them. They're used to working with them and they've worked with supermarkets. When you are supplying people like waiters and mark suspensors, your guys don't need to worry because they're they're basically what they want from you is sort of quite difficult as interesting. I mean, I'll hand over to tristan to explain it, but yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 6:Just to get brC itself um cost us a fortune. We have to fully maintain it all year round. Obviously anybody can walk through your door at any time and walk toward it. Absolutely everything that you've got in your factory, from your staff to where your knives were made, to what you've got in your chiller um, and that is just the starting point before you can actually supply retail. So the m&s will have their own set of standards which are above and beyond brc, and then waitrose will have another set of standards which will be slightly different from marks and spencers and we obviously have to maintain all of those at all times and traceability of is a massive part of that, as in cross-contamination, all of the hygiene rules and everything. So I'm confident out of our factory we can supply anybody.
Speaker 3:How do you guarantee, from the shop placement and the beast going down to getting it to you, that that carcass has been properly handled?
Speaker 6:well, I mean, this is an inspection process when it arrives on site and we collect everything directly from estate chillers in our own estate, in our own chilled vehicles. Our guys are trained to check a carcass when they collect it in the first place. We have a full traceability system which which we use. From that point we check temperatures all the way through the call chain. So you know we get it all the way back and you can tell and there are certain things that will be rejected for retail. But it doesn't mean we can't use them somewhere else. But obviously each time you do that you're adding in cost.
Speaker 9:I think this is quite a good juncture to turn to you, david, and I think you know what I'm going to ask you about, which is the british quality world venison assurance scheme. But I think you know this is a solution that a lot of people have fed into. I think the aims of it are laudable. It's going to require all of us to buy into it and support it. But I think just a moment for you to talk about it, david, would be interesting to hear.
Speaker 5:Yeah, thank you. So British Quarter Royal Venison was set up way back well, I say way back, it was in July 2020. It was in that early COVID period and the food sector and the deer sector were sort of miles apart. All the game dealers were shutting the doors and it was about how we increase the supply of british wild vans into that catering supply chain or into that bigger market. And we didn't really know what that bigger market was. But what we did know was that periodically and we've all been there the game dealers didn't need the carcasses because their bigger marketplace wasn't big enough.
Speaker 5:As we're going forward, we need to be culling a lot more deer. There's no question about that. There's a lot of small species and there's a lot of large species and really I think the market's split into two places. The small species are hard to handle Small returns on the volume of carcass, so there's a market for that. The second market is the larger species, which game dealers do want because they're easier to convert into volumes of meat.
Speaker 5:The bit you identified, simon, about what happens from point of shot to ending up in the AGHE, that is the bit that we've highlighted and was highlighted to us as the weak point in everything we do. What we should all be doing is treating this product as food from just before we squeeze that trigger to when it leaves our premises. And there's a lot of cases out there where we all see the failings. There's also some really high quality vents out there being produced by guys who've got all the processes, all the procedures in place. So we mustn't undermine that. But what we need to do is identify where the gaps were. But what we need to do is identify where the gaps were. The initial gaps are where you shoot it, the extraction process and how quickly it enters the cold chain. The cold chain, the chiller if you're supplying AGHE and anyone else, should be registered as a food business with local authority. Now we all know that there's some challenges around that, but it's a very simple, straightforward process. The second point is how it gets from that chiller to the agh in, and these are the bits that scare properly the food sector. So I was with exeter university a couple of weeks ago with dover mccauley and they wanted to use British Wild Vensin, but they didn't trust the bit. From Pointershot to the AGHE, the AGHEs can have all the checks in place. So we've developed in partnership with British Society, basque the NGO, the AGHEs and some of the buyers to develop the British Quality Wild Vensin standard.
Speaker 5:Yes, it's another red tractor. Yes, it's another audit process, but at the moment there is no one checking the bit between point of shot and it ended up in a HHE. Nothing's audited, nothing that we can go to a caterer and say this is what happens. We and say this is what happens. We can say this is what should happen, but no one's checking the process. So there's what we call bqwv. Is that ordered supply chain? Is an auditor going out and checking that the stalkers are qualified, they are trained hunters, that they inspect those carcasses, they look at the extraction equipment available. They talk to the stalkers on the ground and say what processes do you follow?
Speaker 5:What are your cleaning regimes for that quad bike, for that trailer, for the truck? And when we open the back of the truck up and have a look on the inside, what do we see? Do we see the petrol can, the spade, the bag of dog food, the pheasant feed, or do we see a nice clean back of the truck with a nice blood tray in it or drag tray that can be kept clean before it ends up that chiller. That's what we're looking for. We're looking for those standards and it's an annual audit and, yes, I know it's going to cost you money. So if you're only doing a few deer a year, it's not going to make economic sense. But if we want deer to go into our supply chain in volume and supply the caterers, supply these big corporate events, where we can move volume, we can provide a consistent product. We need to put those checks in place and that's what the bqwv scheme's about and, love it or hate it, it's here.
Speaker 5:And if you want to sell your deer in volume to the catering trade through the AJHE's and get a consistent price I'm not going to say it's going to be a great price it's going to be at the price point that works. And we, if we actually look at a business, we know what those costs are. We know that the transport costs are high. We know that the processing costs are high. We know that we have a skilled labor shortage in the processing plant. So we need to pay the right price there.
Speaker 5:Plants are expensive to run. Freezers are expensive to run. Ben ribby's just invested 1.8 million in a big new freezer unit to support the sector. Yes, he'll make money out of it, but he could only pay the price points at work. So I think there's a lot going forward that we've got can be positive about. There is a market out there. There's both a local market for the local guys who are supplying locally under hundreds of exemption through registered food businesses into that local marketplace, and there's a big marketplace out there that we haven't captured yet that we really should be looking at. But for that we have to reach the standards they expect us to reach and there's a culinary olympics that's held every how many years.
Speaker 3:You know the international one. Is there any in it? Is there any? Well, the welsh national team said to me, like we can't keep serving up welsh lamb or beef, and I and I said to him, have do something different. So so, nick, and in fact you, I think you helped out and we decided to go with Monk. Jack, I think you were a judge.
Speaker 7:Were you a judge, then I've helped the Cullinan Olympics guys basically at Reesby Estate because I shoot on Reesby Estate and I've taken the guys stalking and then basically I took them on a range and everything and basically explained the whole process. I some of the the chefs out stalking to basically understand the whole process of it well, they did.
Speaker 3:They did um muckjack three ways and they, when you consider they're up against all the other nations of the world. And there's some fine kumru to dishes. They came home with a silver medet and that just goes to the most of those judges.
Speaker 9:By the way, never eaten muckjack before ed um, I think that there is also this, this point that there's been highlighted from these conversations, which is that we can get rid of the get rid of wrong word, but we can move most cases, the large species, but it's, what do we do with the smaller species? And I think this is going to be the really interesting, because I'm already hearing stories of Chinese water deer, muntjac, you know, getting buried. Or should we actually just be leaving them lying on the ground? And that, to me, is like total capitulation and we just you know, if we can, we've got to do everything we can to avoid doing that. And I think it'd be interesting to hear you know should, if we can, we we've got to do everything we can to avoid doing that. Um, and I think it'd be interesting to hear you know from nick, and nick just you know, actually is this solution? What do you do with your muncher?
Speaker 4:well, my, my muntjac are being sold. If I sell them to a game dealer, if they're clean, shot or headshot, I get 50 pence a kilo. So a 10 kilo muntjac is bringing me a return of five pound, which isn't really paying for the ammunition or the tag or anything else that's involved with it. If I just take that muntjac and I'm a small business, I'm a registered food business I can process at my home. I can break that muntjac down, turn into mints. I can sell it to my local pub who turn into burgers and sell it as muntjac burgers, where the clientele are actually asking the muntjac.
Speaker 4:That's a little deer I see in my garden and they are what we call spite eating. So they are literally ordering their burgers because they're getting revenge on the little deer that's eating all their flowers. So it's it's a marketplace in its own right just because of that mentality. Um, we probably should talk now to nick weir, who's got the open food network, as how he's going to fit into that. Helping people like myself as a small business to move that forward.
Speaker 6:Helping people like myself as a small business to move that forward. Can I just say we do pay a pound a kilo for muntjac and Chinese water deer and we have a good market.
Speaker 8:We'll talk. Ok, so the little green flyer that you've got on your chair, that's got a QR code on it. We are encouraging anybody who has venison for sale in whatever scale carcass pieces, burgers to register on that map. Once you're on that map, we will be promoting that map. We'll be pushing that out there, getting people to see it, and individual shoppers will find you on that map and they will contact you and they will ask you what you've got available and what price. That service that we're offering recording you and putting you on the map is completely free. We want as many of you on there as possible. The more people are on that map, the more powerful that map is, the more useful it is to the shoppers and the buyers. So we're not charging at all for you to do that.
Speaker 8:If you then want to go to the next step and actually start to sell that meat and offer it if you're able to butcher it yourself, or if you want to sell for whole carcasses, you can set up your own online shop front using the Open Food Network. It's got all the functionality there to take online payments, to issue invoices, to process orders, to deal with the whole of the e-commerce bit of that process. If you decide to do that, we will then ask you for 2.4% of everything that you sell, and we invoice that in arrears at the end of each month. The other option, as well as doing both of those things, is that already there are hundreds of shops on the Open Food Network. Already We've been trading for 18 years. There's about 230 shops across the UK and those shops may well be interested in putting your venison on their shop front, so they'll be selling vegetables, meat, poultry, beer, bread already on those shops. Many of them are very interested in getting wild venison into those online shop fronts.
Speaker 8:So the other option, as well as having just your own registration on the map for free or having your own shop, is you can also sell it through the existing shops and those shops will do a deal with you. You will set your price for your venison. They will then add a markup on top of that price to cover their running costs. We won't make any money out of that, but we will then charge the shop that then sells it on for you. So there's a there's a network out there. It's an established network. At the moment there's very few stalkers in there, and the reason I'm here this weekend is that I want more stalkers on there, which is why we're asking you to click on the QR code on here and fill that in. The way those shops work is all managed locally. They will each have their own ways of managing how they, how they sell that business and who they sell it to.
Speaker 9:Great thanks, nick. I think, and I think just to reiterate, you know, the critical part of that is, if we're going to be using things like the wild venison network is quality of the product. You know, and it's got to run through everything we do and it's what I hear, timing and again from everyone involved, whether it's from aghe's people receiving products or wanting to buy products is quality, and I think that's where we should all, as a sector, not be afraid to keep lifting standards, go for training, improve training, because it's going to benefit all of us in the end, which means we're going to be able to sell our venison. So I think the other question I was going to ask, tristan, is we here? You know, david, you've talked about it we need to cull more deer. We definitely do. But is there capacity in the AJHE for an increased deer cull? What, what, what is constraining capacity, or could you take more? It sounds like you're about to get overwhelmed with Munchak.
Speaker 6:We won't become overwhelmed. I don't think we've never, ever said no to anybody that wants to bring us venison, unless there's been a problem with their facilities. We always seem to find a market. Don't get me wrong. We've been searching for a lot of loins. I think a lot of people have got a lot of haunches. We have a problem with carcass utilisation across the board. But you know, with a bit of hard work we do tend to get there in the end and it is the safest way.
Speaker 6:I think venison needs to come through at AGHE, because the FSA aren't going to go to everybody's individual chillers and stamp a venison safe for human consumption just from a stalker.
Speaker 6:So although you need the schemes, we're potentially you know it's going to get into the market that way.
Speaker 6:For us it's a little bit terrifying because we're the ones with something to lose if there is a problem, um, which is ends up in the press or something like that, that's not actually gone through what I would call the correct channels, but that's a matter of opinion.
Speaker 6:But yeah, market wise. So a few years ago, uh, we wrote a contract with marks and spencers, um, where we was going to supply five lines into them. We spent an awful lot of money on the factory to make a BRC approved venison side and went through all of their audit controls, designed the labels and then, one month before we were about to launch, they pulled the plug because they decided to use farmed venison. So at that point we'd already aligned ourselves with a lot of people to get a lot of venison. So at that point we'd already aligned ourselves with a lot of people to get a lot of venison in and yeah, we ended up filling the freezes but eventually you find a home for it. But it's just another one of those challenges which doesn't help the price to the stalker as well.
Speaker 9:And I mean this is a sort of questions could be quite a controversial question, but is the reality, when you look at what venison prices have done and as the market currently says, do we just have to accept, rather than continuing to complain about venison prices as the producers of that venison, that actually you can't look on venison as something that's going to make you money?
Speaker 6:I mean, you know, know, as things currently sound, from my point of view, we always really do our best to pay as much as we can possibly pay to try and make sure that consistency is correct and the quality that we get through the door is correct. And then, you know, trying to balance it out I mean my director of lincoln cheer game, I'm actually the financial director of Lincoln Shear Game, so I tend to look at it and cry a lot at the best of times. So just you know. But we genuinely do feel at the moment we're paying a very fair price for what we're ending up with in the end and where we can sell it at. And the only way you can sell it, the only way you could eventually increase that, is to make it a more premium product and forget about trying to normalize it and doing the hard work of the hard sell that this is a luxury item, because guess what it should be? Because it is actually.
Speaker 9:Yeah, I think you may get differing views on that one. I mean, it's no doubt it's a great product, but actually if we're going to actually sell the venison, we need to cull. It. Can't be a luxury product because there isn't the outlet for it.
Speaker 6:No, but if you want a better price for it, that's the only option.
Speaker 9:Yeah, right. Well, I think this is probably a moment to throw open to the floor for anyone who has questions.
Speaker 10:Thank you very much. It seems to me that we're talking about two separate markets, not just in terms of big deer and small deer. But you've got the big numbers going into retail hotels, restaurants. You've got the small numbers going on to the local market, if you will. It seems to me that the market for the big guys is quite well established. It's fairly consistent. If the stalker is doing their bit, there's a market for it through the game dealers, but the local market to me seems quite suppressed. Game dealers, but the local market to me seems quite suppressed. Probably that might be local to me, I don't know how, how. I'm wondering your buyers whether they're more local or more rural and if, how do we boost their numbers?
Speaker 8:yes, they are definitely more local. So all of the shops that are on the Open Food Network already are serving their local communities, either local individual households or business-to-business, sell its cafes, restaurants and, more recently, selling into the public sector, but all as local as possible. Some of them, yes, are very rural, some are very urban, some are central Birmingham, central London. They vary dramatically and the management of that is very, very much at that local level. So we have certain standards that we impose nationally and certainly Venice is all going through the BDS scheme and there is a process there when you fill in this form of checking that you are registered with local hygiene and so on.
Speaker 8:But the promotion of that is done at local level. A whole range of software support in terms of taking payments, taking orders, managing all of the order processing. But we also offer a lot of marketing resources. So we do social media training with each, all of our hubs. We encourage them to do newsletters. We tell, encourage them to tell the story of where does that food come from. So we're very interested in individual stalkers talking about you know their practices and how they work and building a relationship, building loyal customer relationships at a local level with between the local stalker and the local buyers and shoppers.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I think. Actually, on that one as well, I think I think the local markets are actually strong. But it's like marketing any product you need to know your market and you need to go out there and sell it. And if you go and talk to people at work or at the sports club or wherever else you do in your spare time, you will find people that want the product product but they don't know where to find it.
Speaker 5:And there's a massive hole there that the local production can fill. I think the national thing is much bigger and if we're going to get food into your sector, it needs a different sort of setup. It really does, and I would love to get more munchak going through the big ags so that we could.
Speaker 11:We got a better volume, but we do need consistency of product and I think it's that sort of bigger end where we're slightly struggling a little bit hey, just to stir the pot a bit, how do you propose to monitor what I'm doing in a thousand acre forest in Scotland at 6am on a November morning? Secondly, how do you monitor the guy in New Zealand? And do you get New Zealand venison for 50 beer kilos?
Speaker 4:I can probably help on that. We go out of our way to train the stalkers how to do things right. There has to be a level of responsibility and pride in what we do as stalkers. I'm really proud when I look at the deer hanging up in my chiller, because they're all looking uniform, they're all clean, they're all well shot, there's no contamination. But it's yeah, it's my pride and making sure I do a good job, which is the only thing we can learn, because you cannot have somebody in the field with you looking at what you're doing.
Speaker 4:What david's saying is that he makes sure the equipment that you're using to go between the point of shot and the chiller is the right sort of equipment. You're not using the dirty, filthy back of a truck, and this is one of the problems that I see is that we look at the, we look at the social media, we look at some of the posts that some people put up and they're dragging a big red stag into the back of their pickup, which is full up a straw where the dog normally sleeps. Now, clearly, that sort of thing when you're a buyer and you go onto the internet, you look at that standard of handling. That kind of thing would stop any buyer from ever buying venison. So David's looking at what you use in his scheme.
Speaker 4:It looks at the way forward, it looks at how you're transporting it. In much the same way as the local authorities when they're checking the local buyers, they also want to inspect your vehicle. They want to see how you're transporting carcasses. If you want to be horrible with a carcass between point of shot and getting it to a larder that eventually will fall down because somebody's going to find feces inside it, whatever it might be. So we have to take a bit of responsibility and pride for our own products. How do I monitor and use it? Well, that's farmed. So if it's if it's farmed, it's gone to an abattoir.
Speaker 6:It's been checked every way through we're only dealing wild venison, so I've never bought anything from New Zealand. Never relieved that to some of the other guys so I couldn't tell you on the Sanders thing yeah. I agree. I think there's far too much.
Speaker 5:I think there's also space for all sorts of different venison in the marketplace. I think there's probably a space for New Zealand imported farmed. I think there's a place for UK farm and park. There's a probably a space for new zealand imported farmed. I think there's a place for uk farm and park. There's also european wild venison coming in, which is a totally different standard. So the standards, though, through bqwv or through, I guess your standard is they are checked every year. The local authority have been out of my premises, I think, twice in the last 20. So there's no check on that at all, and that's what scares you son.
Speaker 3:Well, I just wanted to put a positive note in this as well, which is there's a wind of foot and there's a wind of change of foot, and when we have conference and convention clients come to us contractually, now there's a kind of an ecological questionnaire that we have to fill out and they want to know what the carbon footprint is of our business. And have any of you seen the Kelty Manor as you go to Wales? It's a big operation, right, it's huge. What do you think the largest contributor to our carbon footprint is in that huge facility? Now I'd have thought, as a director, because I see the bill it's energy, it's electricity, it's actually beef. It's actually the amount of beef that we serve. If we can change the narrative to a more wild food, you know, I think it's just you, just a feeling. Time and life is everything and we've got a, we've got a window of opportunity here to push wild food.
Speaker 7:So just on the back of that, I just to show you basically how, as you said, there is sort of change afoot, basically how, as you said, there is sort of change of foot um, over the last sort of two, three years we've been doing a lot of work, um on getting big cavemen companies to basically swap out um some of their beef to venison and has a um, a lower carbon footprint. And so what they're looking at and quite simply what they think because they work a numbers game is they sort of look at it and they say, right, okay, how we need to basically cut off our carbon footprint in our food. So if we have, like I don't know, 20 standardized recipes for beef, if we can take 10 of those and swap them out for venison, we cut our carbon footprint by 50. That's the way they look at it. That's just numbers. But they're basically looking at and again, when we're trying to basically put product in into them, is it convinced them to basically take wild venison?
Speaker 7:Now a few people have asked me and I'll get on throw this out there because a few people have asked me. I said, well, it's about time that we started in supermarkets basically labeling everything with species. We can't do that because the problem is is that basically with species, is that once we start labelling it as species, we have seasons here where we cannot get venison and and I desperately do not want england to go down the track that basically scotland's going down we're issuing animals out of season, right, and so therefore we have to be, we have to be able to basically serve, serve supermarkets and serve people with venison, unless we're going down the restaurant chains. With the restaurant chains, yes, they should know what the animals are and it should be put onto the menu as to basically what certain species are. But when you're serving supermarket sort of diced venison, when you're serving them basically venison, mints, depending on what their regulations are, right we could give them venison and that's basically how it needs to say to be able to give them the right amount. We've also had, and when we talk about catering companies that have done this, basically that swapped out the beef, there's been people like Compass, sodexo is starting to do it, now the NHS is starting to do it. Basically, all those sorts of companies are basically looking at that for that message of basically what's behind it and we've done work towards that. We work with other catering companies. Now we've got ch and co, which we're working with, and through simon and tristan, what we've done is basically, because they sponsor the college, we are open to working with them and bringing in the people that they want to teach about medicine and about the background of medicine, the whole story of venison, and doing demonstrations for those chefs to basically re-educate them and give understanding about your carcass utilization, because that is a big problem with carcass utilizations.
Speaker 7:I hate the fact the majority of chefs can look no further than the two loins that are on the back of a venison, back of a deer. Yeah, apparently, yeah, that's the only thing that exists on the deer with most chefs and what we try to do, especially where I I've worked with them, I I'm working with the haunches of venison I turn to basically use haunch of venison a heck of a lot and we've proved that we can do dinners of 150, 200 people using the haunch muscles right and basically trimming them, yeah, and cooking them in a way that they're actually better than the loin. You know, it's not just look at the loin. The other thing I mind my pet hates is when chefs call the loins fillets. I cannot stand that and it's basically really bad terminology in the fact that basically those people are standing. When I did national chef of the year which is the biggest competition you can do in this country for chefs in national chef of the year, we had 75 entries. Out of 75 entries, 72 of them used venison fillet.
Speaker 7:Now, it annoyed me that much that on the day I said let's give them venison fillets, I want to see what they can do with the venison clinic. Yeah, they ordered two venison fillets, let's give them two puny little venison fillets. And when they get there I have a heart attack because, but it's not what they've ordered, but we, I, I. I then did a venison master class with the finalists and when I did the venison master class I told them this yeah, your terminology is all ball. You've got to understand that. These are not for this. The other thing I hate is sirloin of venison. There's no bloody such thing as a serpent of venison.
Speaker 7:Yeah, but yeah, that education on our side and we, we work with these guys. We've done some work with the highland game as well, basically educating guys about the utilization of product, and we're, if you like, we're a hub to do that work because obviously we understand the product and we have the equipment to be able to do that and we're open to doing it. Yeah, we're open to doing that work and bringing as many people as you like, sit them down, give them lunch, show them stuff and educate, so that then those chefs can go away and basically be able to have a good supplier and supply some of the product that their chefs can be innovative with. Most of the time, it's about showing their chefs how to use it, and it's not showing them recipes, because what these guys are teaching them is suck eggs shown in recipes, because what these guys are, but you're teaching them to suck eggs. They know how to cook. It's just a case of educating what parts of the animal how to use.
Speaker 8:You know that's also thank you, um.
Speaker 12:Okay, so I'm a sheep farmer, I'm a deer stalker, um, I also own a deer park and I retail all my own venison. The thing that attracted me into venison production is that I can be a producer, retailer. I can do the whole thing myself, which obviously I can't do with my sheep and my other livestock, which is why I was not at all keen on the British quality wild venison and shorts thing, because it relied on carcasses going through an AGHE. And I'm very keen on the the open food network, but that's by the vibe. And I 100 percent sympathize with the game dealers though, because you know I get sick to death of stalkers complaining about the price they get for carcasses. Um, because they're using game dealers as a disposal service. You know it's shocking. I've seen people shooting two deer and they keep a good one for themselves and they look at the poor one with all the shot holes in and say, oh, that's one for the dealer, you know? Um, so I really think stalkers have got to up their game. I think the standard of carcasses are being produced on the whole is pretty poor. It's shocking, you know, whether it's shop placement or whether it's grellicking standards or whether it's carcass handling from the field to the larder. Unless we as stalkers really up our game, we can never go to the game dealers or to the customers and say we're producing a consistent product, we want you to pay for it. A consistent product, we want you to pay for it.
Speaker 12:Um, now nick's touched on the the pride aspect of um. You know his pride in his job that makes all his carcasses nice and consistent in the larder. Um, but a lot of people don't seem to have that pride. They seem to be just churning out carcasses that are frankly awful. Um, how can we as an industry, with the support of the guys up there as well, the pds and so on how can we really get the message through to the stalkers? Whether it's not necessarily training that's needed, because people know in the bottom of their heart what these carcasses should look like and they know they shouldn't be dragging them through leaf litter and chucking in the back of the pickup with all the rubbish and so on. They know that in the bottom of their heart. So it's not training people need.
Speaker 12:But how can we as an industry actually open the eyes of stalkers and make them realize that a carcass like that is just not good enough, whether you're selling direct to the customer, as I do and as I say, you know, for me that's, that's the whole beauty of venison, that's the whole thing that makes me love the whole industry is I can shoot the animal, I can manage its ecosystem by controlling the population. I can then process it myself and put a quality product in front of my customers. But how can we really get all the stalkers on board to start thinking of that animal as food from before they even pull the trigger? What is the incentive we can use? Because it's not just going to be higher prices. There's got to be something that engenders that pride, that makes people think, yeah, that's real quality, that's not just a dead animal because I had to kill it. Um, what can we use as our incentive to get that?
Speaker 4:hello right, tim, hear what you're saying. Um, we've already made that first step because we're all sat here, we're all listening to this, so this is a good first start. We need to make sure that we all promote venison in a great way. We all need to be doing our social media. We also need to call them people who aren't doing it as good as they could be doing it. We need to actually pull them up on it and say look, fella, you know, I saw your Facebook post and that's pretty grim. You shouldn't be doing that, let alone putting it on Facebook. So can you give us some examples of your? From a game dealer's point of view, what's the worst you're getting? But you must get some really good guys as well yeah, I prefer to focus on the good stuff.
Speaker 6:To be honest with you. Um, yeah, inevitably we get some rubbish and we have to have a home for it. Uh, obviously it costs you once you start disposing of things that get dropped off at the door. Um, we pay the same all the way through. We don't tell people to do head shots or chest shots or anything else. So, unless as long as the saddle is okay, we will take the venison at that price, because we're not encouraging people to take a shot with my confident, with and all the rest of it but the question the audience member asked was should you be subsidizing a potentially a good shot carcass compared to that of a poorly shot carcass?
Speaker 2:would that, uh, would that generate more quality game rather than maybe a substandard game, eg a head and neck shot over a chest shot?
Speaker 6:Potentially, but just the ethics of potentially taking a head shot because it might be worth. That's kind of like where we draw the line so we do play the same all the way through. That's our Potentially, but it's just ethical is.
Speaker 9:It is actually the. Is the question that perhaps you need to reject more when people drop it off? And I mean is that you know people need to learn and and the only way they're going to learn is by not being able to find an outlet?
Speaker 6:Yeah, absolutely. If it's unusable, then it will be rejected, of course.
Speaker 9:And even if elements of it are usable, it's just to turn around and point out to the person sorry for this, this and this. Yeah, we can use a bit of it, but it's going to cost us to dispose of two thirds of the carcass.
Speaker 6:We're not going to pay anything for it, but you can leave it here. Yeah, most of the value in the deer is in the saddle. So that is the first inspection, obviously, and the rest of it we deal with it appropriately. But yeah, we're dealing with a lot of deer so we've got to do a lot of inspections. You know the guys are very busy so we have to just set a rule somewhere and that's it. No, I don't think so. I think if we're collecting from a larder, we know where it's coming from and you know, if there's something horrendous, then people know not to present it to us.
Speaker 9:I think we've got time for one more question.
Speaker 2:So the audience member was asking here about maybe what we should be doing through the deer network is connecting more stalkers so that the end user can kind of actually chat to the person that potentially shot the deer and all the rest of it. Uh, therefore say they've got a venison haunch and it's really delicious, and that person then can get in touch with the, the guy that took the deer, and say thank you ever so much, I really enjoyed that um, can I just say, jesse that, and I've recently come from a board basically working in portugal, and also I've been working in czech republic in places like that.
Speaker 7:If you think that we have a problem, yeah we don't have any problem.
Speaker 7:All right, because anybody, anybody being on a driven sheep yeah, driven sheep, yeah, monterey. If you look at the way a carcass is basically worked in a monterey when the animals are shot, that's sort of like, I know, seven o'clock, eight o'clock in the morning, they're not particularly basically bothered about where they've been shot, and then it's sort of like 28 degrees and the animals are basically sitting there with the guts in, and then about four, five o'clock in the afternoon they're all sitting there still with their guts in or the guts half hanging out, and they're presented for the photographs and then it's sort of like half past five, six o'clock, a vet turns up. They growl at them and he actually bloody stamps them fit for human consumption and we think we've got a problem. In actual fact, the work I've been doing out in portugal, they've been looking at us because they think our standards are incredible in comparison to basically what they are in actual fact, the estate that I'm working with at the moment. They've actually gone completely away from monterey right through now to all stalked animals and basically animals that are put through the carcass, through the chiller chain, corrective cuts, basically, chiller chain. For the moment, basically, animals are. Within half an hour of the animal being shot, it's collected and within 90 minutes it in the chiller and all of the all of this has been set up and everybody else in portugal was looking and going. These guys are doing a great job, they're brilliant and we're just doing pretty much the minimum standards that we have here in the uk.
Speaker 7:We've taken, basically I've taken what is the dcs out there and I basically tried to train people with it out there. Now, like I said, I said I mean we're all complaining about headshot, chest shot, whether a carcass is out there, they'd take all of them, they'd be perfect medicine, they would be getting the same price and everybody would be paying. Fantastic, they're all happy with it and we would not even eat that. Can you imagine basically taking it out shooting an animal, basically losing it first thing in the morning and finding it in the afternoon? Losing it first thing in the morning, finding it in the afternoon? How many of you would put that for a larder? No one, but just wouldn't.
Speaker 2:So the audience members states here that after jose was speaking about monterias that if you were on a forestry call or a deer call maybe down south, I don't know the fallow or something like that and you're up a high seat and you shot one early first first light, that deer could lie there because you're not allowed to get down from the high seat and potentially that deer could be there for up to six hours still with its guts in. And obviously it was just basically trying to cover the same point that it does happen within the UK or within forestry areas yeah, but we're all saying that's wrong.
Speaker 7:so basically, if anything, those companies are the companies basically that shouldn't be basically getting paid any premium for their products and if anything, those companies should be scrutinized about what they're doing.
Speaker 9:I think we're going to have to wrap it up there. We've, I think, only hit the thin end of the wedge on this rather topical discussion, but I think we can. All you know when we talk about imports of venison coming from New Zealand deer farms, but actually the takeaway is well, there's clearly a demand for it, people are eating venison. What we need to do is work out well, what do we need to do to replace wild venison with farm venison coming from New Zealand? And you know, what comes consistently through all this is standards, and we've all got to keep lifting our standards and not rest on our laurels. It's great to hear you know we looked at exemplars, but we can all come up with plenty of examples where we aren't exemplars and we've got to do better.
Speaker 9:But I'd just like to thank all of my panel. Thank you very much for coming along, all of you for your input today, listening, and please do, if you feel compelled to do it, sign up to the Open Food Network, because I think this is a great initiative. But thank you all very much indeed for coming. And just to add in obviously no one's going to be allowed to leave this room unless you're a BDS member. Well, that's not a joke, I mean that.
Speaker 2:But thanks everyone yet again, I apologize for the audio. It was a struggle to get that recorded and actually reduce the background noise of a very, very busy show, but we did manage to get it there and hopefully it has been an interesting topic for you. If it has raised any questions, you can get in touch with me that's peter at theoutdoorgibboncom, or you can contact the BDS and fire those questions over to them. But yes, venison is certainly a hot topic. How can we get it more mainstream? Can we get it more mainstream? Are the stalkers being looked after? Are the game dealers giving us the best deal? How do we do all of this? So if there is things to talk about, please come back to us.
Speaker 2:Anyway, these were two very special recordings just done for the bds at the 2025 stalking show, so hopefully you've enjoyed those and it probably has raised a few topics. But anyway, please, please, listen to the rest of the back catalogue of the outdoor given podcast. If you've enjoyed this, subscribe. There's always new topics coming up and we will probably dig deeper into these two two podcasts and see if we can answer some of those questions for you that you may not have even thought about. Anyway, we'll catch you on the next one.