NEWS
SNIPS
Loopline
Olives from the
Wairarapa – a
900-tree grove
established in
2001 and owned
by Mark and
Kate Bunny –
has taken out
the 2018 Best
in Show at the
New Zealand
Extra Virgin
Olive Awards
run by Olives
New Zealand,
the national
organisation for
olive oil growers
Revelations
that detector
dogs have been
snoozing while
thousands of
passengers
stroll through
Auckland
International
Airport
unchecked
by biosecurity
sniffer dogs is
very concerning,
National’s
Biosecurity
spokesperson
Nathan Guy says
Ruapehu
Council is
giving away
bee-friendly
wildflower seeds
to assist bees
in the torturous
job of making
beeswax
Nigella Lawson
will tour New
Zealand in
January as
part of her
An Evening
with Nigella
Lawson West
End show, with
appearances
in Auckland,
Wellington and
Christchurch.
TWO SAUSAGES
ON TOP
Hamilton’s New World Te Rapa and
Westmere Butchery in Auckland are joint
supreme winners for 2018 in the Devro
Great New Zealand Sausage Competition
after judges – in a first for the competition
- could not decide between their
respective Angus beef sausage and beef
and mushroom sausage. “Throughout
this year’s competition, the standard has
been phenomenal,” judge Kathy Paterson
says. “Flavours have been well thought
through, the quality of the butchery has
been impeccable and as a result it has
created a really tough, but enjoyable, job
for the judges.” Westmere Butchery owner
David Rossiter has been in the industry
for more than 45 years, and New World
Te Rapa butchery team head Chris Nicol
more than 25 years. “We have won a
couple of awards in the Devro Great New
Zealand Sausage competition but never
taken the top spot before,” Nicol says.
“It’s an unbelievable feeling. It’s come at
a tough time for us, we’ve been short of
staff and we’ve needed people to step up
and they did. It makes me so proud of my
team and to be part of the industry.”
NEWS
MAORI CHEF
HONOURED
Monique Fiso – renowned chef
and Maori cuisine champion
– has opened a Museum of
Transport & Technology (MOTAT)
exhibit honouring her Hiakai cuisine
initiative. The entrepreneur,
who will launch a Wellington
restaurant shortly, is included in
the exhibition The Innovators,
joining past exhibitors Rocket
Lab’s Peter Beck, Xero’s Rod
Drury, Animation Research’s
Ian Taylor, The Mind Lab by
Unitec’s Frances Valintine and Dr
Keith Alexander from Springfree
Trampolines. Fiso’s Hiakai was
initially run as a pop-up style
dining experience, and became
renowned for her Michelin-style
interpretation of Maori cuisine
and her use of indigenous
ingredients. Her efforts have
increased the number of practitioners,
growers and suppliers
shining a contemporary light
on Maori food heritage. MOTAT
says from conceptualisation to
creation, including setbacks
and all the learnings along the
way, The Innovators is about
Kiwi ingenuity in action and will
inspire future world leaders and
entrepreneurs.
MISLEADING CHICKEN LABELS
Animal rights group SAFE is taking aim
at the “misleading labels” on the packaging
of chickens bred for meat...and says
manufacturers are lying to their customers.
Annually, around 120 million chickens
are bred for meat in New Zealand,
SAFE’s head of campaigns Marianne
Macdonald says, but the meat chicken
industry is misleading people with labels,
“in the same way the egg industry does.
Tegel and Ingham, two of New Zealand’s
biggest chicken brands, market their
products as cage-free, implying some
sort of ethical advantage,” she says. “The
reality is these companies are operating to
the minimum possible standard.” In ‘cagefree’
systems, Macdonald claims, around
40,000 birds are confined in each shed,
densely crammed and suffering from
problems associated with overcrowding
and unhygienic conditions. Poultry
giant Tegel’s proposed ‘mega-farm’
near Dargaville, which has been turned
down by the Overseas Investment Office,
would have been another example of this
system, she says. “People would be disgusted
if they knew how the chicken they
buy is raised - so the industry makes sure
people don’t know. Free-range systems
are little better than conventional ones,
because the sheds are only required to
have small outdoor access points, which
together with the huge number of birds
confined, makes it difficult for individual
chickens to get outside. We would like to
see New Zealand follow overseas examples
and stop selling fast-growth birds,
which are born to suffer. However, the
best way to help chickens is to keep them
off the plate.”