Pig's ear, or silk purse?

Mike King threw a spotlight on caged pigs. Photo / NZ Open Rescue

When comedian Mike King appeared on television last year revealing the worst-kept secret in New Zealand agriculture, some observers of local pig farmers' perennial struggle for survival saw it as a great opportunity for the pork industry. A year later, it looks like a great opportunity lost.

Filming on a clandestine night-time visit to a large, industrially managed pig farm near Levin, King revealed the shocking details of distressed animals confined in tiny spaces and suffering extreme emotional trauma.

Was the long-time pork promoter's new stance a PR disaster for pork retailers? Not according to Simon Eriksen, founder and managing director of meat supplier Neat Meat.

"Mike King was the turning point for the pig business. That was the chance they had to reposition the whole category, to improve public perception of pork. For us, Mike put us on the map," Eriksen says.

Eriksen has spent a decade marketing in the local meat business, developing a reputation for innovation in an otherwise moribund sector. His name is behind such success stories as Angus Pure and the recently launched supermarket pork line Harmony, and his opinion is worth noting.

"One retailer we went to had seen their pork sales slump to less than two animals a week after the King programme screened. They took on Harmony and sales jumped to well above what they were doing before. They now take 12 pigs a week from us."

Harmony is free range pork, and its planning and execution were in the pipeline well before King's very public expose. After years of neglect by the pork industry it was time, Eriksen says, for some marketing initiative with pork.

"The opportunity for pork is at the top of the market; there is no room down the bottom," says Eriksen. "Pork is such a try-hard commodity product. We try to compete with overseas producers but they are so big and so industrialised we can't do it. Pork is like chicken, and it is far too hard to differentiate for consumers. Their only incentive to buy is on price."

Eriksen and his partners set out to change that by developing a pork product that could trade successfully in the part of the market where customers were not only prepared to pay a fair price for quality - they wanted to. The obvious opportunity was to address the welfare issue, not just for the sake of the pigs, but, according to Eriksen, "because well cared-for pigs produce better quality pork."

That is one of the reasons South Canterbury's Havoc Farm has always made pig welfare one of its key philosophies. Says owner Linda McCallum-Jackson: "If you start with happy pigs you end up with happy customers."

Not that Havoc is founded on hippy romance. McCallum-Jackson's husband, pig farmer Ian Jackson, is a graduate of Usk Agricultural College in Britain with a degree in pig husbandry. With experience handling the animals around the world, the couple established Havoc based on sound scientific farming knowledge and Ian's experience, as well as as sense of how to operate in a niche market.

"Our biggest cost is labour, which is more than twice what it is on a conventional farm with sow stalls. It means that our pork must be more expensive, but we make sure everybody knows why our products are more expensive, and we don't want to price ourselves off the market - we have to be able to sustain what we are doing.

"We are not going broke farming happy pigs" says McCallum-Jackson.

Havoc, like Harmony, is in complete control of the process from farm to customer, although in Havoc's case the killing is done at the local abattoir because it is illegal to kill on-farm for sale to the public. All processing, however, to sausages, bacon, ham, etc, is by their own team of butchers in their own plant.

It's about quality control," says Simon Eriksen. "You can't take high quality raw material, give it to incompetent processors and expect to end up with a quality product."

It is also about placemen: making sure the best outlets get the best product. For this reason Eriksen has always maintained a strong connection with top restaurants where his brands are exposed in an environment that endorses their premium image. He has also been active in developing a set of quality standards across all meats that chefs can understand and that work effectively.

Similarly, Linda McCallum-Jackson has created a certification system for sale of Havoc pork to restaurants.

"Because we have limited production we are very careful with who we supply. We wouldn't touch supermarkets because we can't trust them to do what they say. When we supply restaurants we expect them to be certified by us, which means every pork item they include on their menu must be from us - bacon, ham, sausages, the lot. It is very hands on," she says.

It is telling that their attitude has support from the restaurant sector, and is gaining considerable momentum at the top of the retail market. Star chef and Masterchef judge Simon Gault buys Havoc for most of the restaurants in his Nourish group, and is sympathetic to Havoc's demands because, he says, it is the only way he can get reliably high quality pork.

"I think it is fantastic quality, and it means that we can buy everything, bacon, chops, fillet, belly, with confidence that it will be the best. You can't say that with the rest of the local pork supply," Gault says.

"The market for our sort of pork is not huge but we have shown it is prepared to pay for top quality product," adds Eriksen. "Now our job is the grow this sector."

Which may just be news to the Pork Industry Board, which is required under law to increase the volumes sold and to obtain higher returns for each unit sold, to increase the demand for New Zealand pork products and co-products (in existing and new markets); and to maintain the confidence of consumers of pork products in the New Zealand pork and pig industries.

Yet Gault says, "Most of the product here is terrible. Chefs have no confidence in buying New Zealand pork."

Sam McIvor of the Pork Industry Board counters by saying "the biggest issues that have been identified through research is an unfamiliarity with the product and lack of confidence cooking it. [People] believe it has to be cooked like a white meat, for example chicken, and so tend to overcook which means, given its dense nature, that it can go tough and dry - so education about how to cook the product is a key promotional requirement."

Eriksen's opinion that pork is "such a try-hard commodity" must also undermine the board's performance record, as does Linda McCallum-Jackson's claim that the board and its supporters, "actively try to undermine whatever we do".

But the most telling criticism of the Pork Industry Board's performance is its failure to differentiate New Zealand pork from imported product, the essence of market success that both Eriksen and McIvor agree on. Imported pork now makes up 45.5 per cent of the New Zealand pork market and the board claims that the poor quality of imported pork undermines local pork producers' reputation.

"I think one advantage [of the King expose] has been that New Zealanders have come to understand the pressure that the NZ industry is under due to imports: the 700,000kg of imported product coming in every week," says McIvor.

However, this does not explain the figures in the board's latest report, which show that per capita pork consumption fell in New Zealand by 2.9 per cent in the past year, with locally produced pork down by 10 per cent, while imported pork consumption increased 5.8 per cent. Of even greater concern for pig farmers in a market where their product is perceived to be a commodity, imported pork increased in value, per kilo, by 10.4 per cent, while the average farm gate price for New Zealand pigs fell 3 per cent.

So far the Pork Industry Board has responded by lobbying for a delay in improvements to pig welfare regulation, and by initiating a pig welfare branding programme that endorses the status quo. Aside from seeking ways to teach chefs how to cook pork, there is no initiative to establish identifiable quality standards that encourage premium pricing for local pork.

Current data must be of concern to the 360 pig farmers who fund the Pork Industry Board's annual budget of $3 million but neither Eriksen nor McCallum-Jackson are expecting more competition any time soon.

Keith Stewart is an Auckland writer with a particular interest in food and wine.