Galloping gourmets put horse, game and haggis on menus

Sometimes, when customers call Perth butcher Vince Garreffa, they cry. The specialist butcher, 62, is the only man in Australia who can give them what they want: contaminant-free horse meat legally culled for human consumption. "I have had people in tears - Europeans who grew up eating horse meat - because they have discovered they are legally able to buy a kilo or two of horse meat without worrying about their health by eating horse meat they have bought from pet shops that might be contaminated with steroids or growth hormones," says Garreffa, the only butcher in Australia with a licence to slaughter and sell horse meat locally.

The butcher says he is aware of customers who have risked their health by purchasing horsemeat from pet stores. "I know we are doing a wonderful community service around Australia." He spends little time trying to convert more cautious customers, knowing only too well that people either eat horse. Or they do not.

Butcher Vince Garreffa photographed at his shop Mondo in Inglewood, Perth.

Garreffa does not display horse meat in-store alongside his other prime cuts at his butcher shop Mondo Di Carne in Inglewood. Nor is it advertised on his website. It is kept out the back in the refrigerators, heavily labelled alongside other animal products that might cause offence such as chicken's feet and pig's heads. For Garreffa, horse meat is not just about serving grateful customers, it is about righting a wrong.

While the export of horse meat is turning into a lucrative industry, it couldn't be legally sold to locals, the way other specialist butchers sell black pudding, haggis and game such as pheasant, partridge and guinea fowl in growing amounts to adventurous consumers.

In its raw form, horse meat is very dark red and rich in iron. When cooked it "tastes like beef, except for a little tiny bit of sweet overtone just at the back of the palate before you swallow", Garreffa says.

Considered a delicacy in many countries, horse meat is often eaten rare as carpaccio or steak tartare.

Garreffa says he humanely slaughters up to 20 horses a year and sells about 500kg of horse meat a month from Mondo Di Carne (he says business has been boosted by the British scandal because it sparked growing customer interest). He also supplies up to four restaurants in each state. Both Mondo Di Carne, and the restaurants it supplies, have been picketed by animal rights activists.

Garreffa says strict government controls over the slaughter and sale of horse meat in Australia ensure the end product is not cheap. "When something is cheap it starts to infiltrate the food industry as a filler (as recently happened in Britain and Europe). That would never happen in Australia because one kilo of horse meat from us sells from $30 up to $90, depending on the cut."

While Italian-born Garreffa, who moved to Perth when he was five and started working in a butcher shop at the age of 14, might be one-of-a kind locally, horse meat has become an export business.

Last year, according to a spokesman from the federal Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Australia exported about 10,000 horses to overseas markets for human consumption. The animals were slaughtered and butchered at an abattoirs in Queensland, and then boxed and transported to Russia, Belgium and France.

The export horse-meat market's value fluctuates wildly. Last year it was worth more than $8.5 million to the economy. For the first three months of this year it is already worth $3.6m.

However, when news broke that the West Australian Health Department had issued the licence to Garreffa in 2010, he received more than 4000 abusive emails, including death threats. He says it's "the hypocrisy" of this that sticks in his throat.

"When you are selling a product to overseas markets, it doesn't seem right that Australians within our own country are not allowed to buy it."

Garreffa says the reason he's the only horse butcher in Australia is because he persevered for more than a decade to make it happen, lobbying the WA government until he found a minister who listened.

"And the reason I persevered was to fix up that anomaly. We needed a small supplier like myself to meet the demand that exists in Australia for a small amount of horse meat for human consumption."

Today up to 15,000 visitors, many with Celtic ancestry, will descend upon the small town of Bundanoon in NSW's Southern Highlands for Brigadoon, and specialist butcher Ian Ovenstone will be working overtime to meet their needs.

Brigadoon, one of the largest highland gatherings of the Scottish diaspora in the southern hemisphere, is a noisy, joyous celebration of heritage and culture. Marching bands, clans, whisky, caber tossing and highland flings are order of the day, and not since the heyday of the Bay City Rollers will you see so much tartan.

Bagpipes blare, strong men lift huge stones, and smells from the ubiquitous Aussie sausage sizzle mingle with the aromas of more traditional Scottish foods, such as black pudding burgers and haggis with neeps and tatties (haggis with turnips and potato).

Ovenstone, 61, is a specialist Scottish butcher who supplies hundreds of kilograms of haggis and black pudding for Brigadoon every year.

From his shop, Hill's Butchery in Maroubra, Sydney, Ovenstone makes and sells haggis, black pudding, white pudding, Scottish sausage, Scottish pies, soda scones and potato scones to dozens of butchers around Australia, including Sydney's Hudson Meats and David Jones outlets.

An apprentice at 15, Ovenstone emigrated to Sydney with his family more than 30 years ago.

"It was always my aim to do Scottish products when I came to Australia, and I think I'm right in saying I'm the only person trading who's really old-school and uses traditional methods like making everything on site, mixing everything by hand and using recipes I learnt as a young laddie," he says. "There are Aussies out there who've bought a butchery that does Scottish produce, but making things like black pudding and haggis are not as easy as you might think."

Some locals were initially taken aback to see Ovenstone's Scottish goods alongside the more familiar prime cuts of beef, pork, chicken and lamb varieties he sells. Black pudding, made mainly from pig blood, and haggis, made from sheep offal and wrapped in ox-bung (the lining from the appendix of a cow), are not everyone's cup of tea.

"I am used to people saying to me 'ah that's disgusting'," he says. "And that's perfectly ok. But when customers come into the shop and say something like that, I might say, 'well would you like a wee little taste?'

"And then invariably they'll say 'oh it's not too bad, it's not too bad at all'. Like anything really, it's always different once you get a taste of the real deal." 

Former Melbourne chef Jerome Hoban, 38, says his decision to leave restaurants to become a specialist game bird breeder, butcher and supplier raised a few eyebrows. "It was a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire," Hoban says. "I was in restaurants for 12 years and I thought that was hard work but it was nothing compared to rearing and then supplying game birds to the restaurant industry.

"On top of looking after the separate wholesale meat side of the business, I had a lot to learn."

In 2008 Hoban and his French wife Annabelle moved their young family to a 6ha property near Cardinia, Victoria, to take over an existing business, Gamekeepers of Australia, after selling their Albert Park restaurant L'Oustal. Their first task was to build up the flocks of pheasant, partridge and guinea fowl, none of which is native to Australia.

'There was a lot of trial and error for the first seasons," he says. "Not on the cooking side of things - I spent five years working in London, I knew how to cook a pheasant by the time I left.

"But as far as the rearing went, there were many, many hours of reading and watching and learning."

Game birds are seasonal, and are eaten in the northern hemisphere during the colder months. Here, the birds breed from October to Christmas and by March, as the weather turns colder, the restaurants start calling.

The birds are sent to an abattoir to be killed and then are returned to the Hobans' farm to be butchered into different cuts such as breasts or ballotines.

Hoban supplies about 200 restaurants in Melbourne, including the Newmarket Hotel, MoVida and Rosetta, and is one of only a handful of farmers breeding game birds on a commercial scale.

"We can't keep breed enough birds for the supply we need - we have a couple of suppliers in Sydney chasing our products and we could send pallets to them.

"Game birds certainly fall into the category of an exotic, specialty food; there is a huge following from the English and the Europeans here, but now the market is expanding as Australians become more adventurous, too."

Source: The Australian, 6 April 2013