by Ele Forster, Project Coordinator (GFN Lead)
Situated on the Logie Estate near Forres, it was a pleasure to cross the Highland/Moray border and drive through sunny, tree-lined lanes to arrive at this event. Over the last year, Brenna and I have been having a lot of online conversations around venison, so I really enjoyed meeting known people in analog, as well as finding new folk to discuss with. Many thanks to Scottish Venison for reaching out to us so we could come along and connect with this exciting development.
The chill and processing unit is impressive in many ways, not least its small footprint. It’s clear Linzi and Tom of Findhorn Venison and Nikki and Jane, their butchers, have taken huge care to set this up well from the start, and now look after it with pride. It’s one of three venison processor recipients of a grant made available as part of the Covid recovery fund through the Scotland Food and Drink Partnership and administered by SAOS.
With 50 of us, it was impossible to do a group tour of the chill, processing rooms and walk in freezer, but we ambled in small clusters – surrounded by varied and interesting conversations between the mix of attendees. I lucked out by joining a group including Nikki Wilkinson, Findhorn Venison’s main butcher. Nikki is engaging and enthusiastic – passionate about producing the best quality product with impressive traceability, and excited about the changes within the venison industry that are showing more women taking up roles in deer management and throughout the supply chain. In fact, several of the conversations I joined discussed the increased role of women – Jane had attended and loved the recent Hindsight camp for women that taught stalking, shooting and butchering skills. There was discussion around improving and maintaining the mental health of those involved in the venison industry. The skills gap was highlighted, especially in butchery, and the desire to engage and empower young people to get involved.
I was struck by the attitude of collaboration at this event. So many different people and organisations have fed into this project that Tom and Linzi’s thankyous took a long time! There were several other venison processing businesses there, from the biggest scottish game dealers to micro producers, and all of them were sharing advice and encouragement with each other. In any part of the food system, it’s heartening to see people realising that by shortening supply chains and building a local market, there’s much room for collaboration across the region instead of competition.
The room contained a great mix of landowners, stalkers, watershed organisations, processors, ecologists and venison industry advocates. Many talked about this shift in the industry towards collaboration – working together for higher deer welfare, quality product and more local people eating healthy meat from their own area.
Lunch was truly amazing (shout out to Lethan Croft catering) and I was surprised and delighted to have a lively discussion about land rights, ownership and how different the culture can be in law depending on whether a deer belongs to itself, the landowner or the people. Discussions about food sovereignty are such an interesting space to explore psychology, history, politics and health.
Several people touched on the Good Food Nation Act as a potential catalyst for getting local venison into school meals. Procurement is a sticky issue, but following the successes on this front in Argyll and Bute, we’re excited to hear that Highland Council has several pilots currently testing venison in Primary Schools. Watch this space!
Seeing this set-up, with its small footprint but relatively large output (2 tonnes last year), I can’t help but hope this is a replicable initiative – with deer culls increasing nationwide, local processing infrastructure like this can be the key to empowering and connecting local communities with the quality meat that’s coming off their own hills.