Courtesy of Danielle Langloism, Wikipedia CCLMeat Goats: Britain
Farming experts say goat meat is considerably under consumed throughout Britain and too much of the goat sold for food has been the waste or cull from dairy herds.
Increasingly, however, Britain’s few meat goat farmers — are breeding more South African Boers for sale and crossing them with dairy goats to increase the quality of the meat.
Tim and Marnie Dobson, of Chestnut Meats in Nantwich, England, own one of the few meat goat farms in Britain and reportedly have been doing a bang-up job at getting Brits to give goat another try.
The Dobsons had planned to raise goats for milk. A family holiday in Canada, however, introduced them to really good goat meat so the Dobsons changed course and started breeding Boers.
They now have a herd of more than 400 Boer goats on their Cheshire Farm and a line of goat steaks, sausages and burgers sold at food festivals, restaurants, stores and through the mail.
The Dobsons have been professionally recognized for the increase in their customer base and for changing people’s perception of goat meat. In 2008, a group of food critics said the Dobsons had the best of any meat in their region and in 2007 regional critics awarded them a “Food Oscar.”
“You can feel isolated at times when developing a diversification project and you are going through a great period of change,” Marnie said in this story profiling small farmers in the United Kingdom.
Getting marketing and develop help from people in similar fields goes a long way toward easing that isolation, she said.
