Sunday Observer article
Posted on 22 Oct 2007
Our farm was recently featured in the Sunday Observer Food Monthly magazine, as part of an article on “Happy Animals Provide Happy Meat!”
The article showcased the obvious fact that looking after cattle in a caring/calm way results in better quality beef – a fact now supported scientifically. More and more farms are taking this on, but this is not just to do with the way cattle are treated from birth at the farm, but also the way they are treated from the farm all the way to the consumer’s plate – even the way animals are treated at the abattoirs matters. Our local abattoir, Millers of Speyside, Grantown-on-Spey, also featured in this article, are proud of the quality of the meat they produce due to the way they treat the animals from arrival, through killing time, and onto the dry-aging process. All this care makes the meat more tender.
Meat’s flavour is dependent on many things – the way the animal was fed, the way it was raised, the fat content of the meat, and the way, after slaughter, the meat was conditioned and matured …. Keeping animals unstressed through their lives, and raising them and feeding them in a consistent way, has been shown to affect meat quality in a very significant way. But clearly the most potentially stressful thing for Balnafettach cattle, as to any of the millions we eat each year, is the manner of their slaughter. Balnafettach Highlanders go to the slaughterhouse at about two-and-a-half year old. We cajole them into a truck in pairs, and they travel about 15 minutes up the valley of the Spey, to Millers’ abattoir at Grantown.
You can read more on the Sunday Observer’s website.