AFSA & Slow Food Central Highlands Proudly Presents Slow Meat 2018

 

Slow Meat is a symposium that aims to educate the public and industry about the ecological and social costs associated with intensively-produced meat and highlight the regenerative and ethical alternatives.

If you’d like to learn more about Slow Meat and all the outstanding panels, feasts, and roundtables that it will entail, please read below.

Already familiar with the event? Jump right into these quick facts:

When: September 23-25
Where: Daylesford, VIC
Tickets: Available for purchase on Eventbrite
Discounts: 10% discounts available for AFSA members, and an additional 10% available to farmer members (20% discount total!)
Email admin@afsa.org.au for your discount code

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Second Annual Slow Meat Calls to Eat “Less, Better Meat”

 

How do we get people to ‘eat better meat, less? For the second year running, Slow Meat Australia will bring together farmers, butchers, chefs, and allies to try to answer this question.

The aim of the Slow Meat Australia Symposium is to enable the critical discussions needed to enable a shift away from the unsustainable and unethical practices of intensive industrial livestock production. Slow Meat Australia aims to educate the public and industry about the ecological and social costs associated with intensively-produced meat and highlight the regenerative and ethical alternatives. Over time, advocates for Slow Meat want to see an industry move towards the highest welfare, pastured farming systems that nourish land, animals and people.

Australia’s annual Slow Meat Symposium is a collaboration between the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance and Slow Food Central Highlands held over three days that includes plenaries and debates around how to progress the slow meat and food sovereignty agendas in Australia and globally. Held in Daylesford on 23 – 25 September 2018, the event will include farm visits, butchery demonstrations and feasts. The event is open to farmers, abattoir operators, butchers, chefs, restaurateurs, academics, and anyone else who is interested in how animals are raised for meat.

Slow Meat Australia is fortunate this year to be bringing American butcher, educator, and James Beard Award-winning author Adam Danforth to Daylesford, who will present well-considered views and deeply informative masterclasses on whole-animal butchery, and the science of flavour to demonstrate slow meat in action.

Danforth will be joined by two passionate proponents for Slow Meat: Michael Hicks of Extraordinary Pork and ethical meat purveyor Laura Dalrymple of Feather & Bone, who will offer provocations on producing, processing, and selling slow meat.

Award-winning food writer and author of My Year Without Meat Richard Cornish will MC Monday’s symposium, and local regenerative livestock farmer and butcher Tammi Jonas of Jonai Farms & Meatsmiths, president of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance, will present an update on the state of the Slow Meat movement in Australia and globally.

Excitingly, this year’s event also boasts six local female chefs who will pair up with local producers to offer food samples and stories of the effects of breed, feed, age,ageing, and cooking on the deliciousness of slow meat.

On Sunday before the Symposium, the public is invited to join a day of informative farm visits, including pastured pig farmers Brooklands Free Range Farms and duck farmers Vue du Volcan. A feast will be had at family-owned winery Captains Creek in Blampied of local delicacies, organic wines, and ciders from apples grown on the farm.

SBS’ Gourmet Farmer Matthew Evans of Fat Pig Farm will revisit the vision for slow meat in Australia, and our Slow Meat Manifesto developed collectively over the Symposium. A celebratory dinner will be the finale to Slow Meat Australia, and per the Slow Meat mantra, will present a menu that encourages participants to ‘eat better meat, less’.

Day three of the Symposium features a not-to-be-missed half-day masterclass with the incredibly knowledgeable and skilled Adam Danforth, award-winning author of Butchering Beef, and Butchering Poultry, Rabbit, Lamb, Goat, Pork.

“What conditions during the life of the animal impact the quality of the meat?” asks Danforth, “These questions (and many more) are answered as a whole carcass is systematically broken down, with individual muscles isolated and described for function, flavour, tenderness, and potential for incredible food memories.”

In this unique format of experiential education, stigmas in meat will be challenged through the use of older animals such as cull dairy cows. The workshop will conclude with several rounds of blind tasting contrasting muscles, reinforcing the core workshop concepts of prioritising flavour over tenderness and the direct correlation between an animal’s welfare and the nutrition and emotional potential in its meat.

Young chef and Jonai sous butcher Morris Willcock of Paddock to Pie will provide lunch on day three.

For the final afternoon, there will be a small-scale abattoir roundtable to bring existing abattoir owners together with the growing movement of farmers, butchers, and allies working to build new abattoirs. Together we will develop a strategy to halt the loss of regional abattoirs across Australia and see new ones thrive to support the growing movement of slow meat farmers and those who choose their ethically- and ecologically-raised produce.

This event is for all enablers, enactors, and allies of the Slow Meat philosophy to discuss and debate all things around the ethical and ecologically-sound production and consumption of meat.

In AFSA president & farmer & butcher Tammi Jonas’ words, ‘the food sovereignty movement broadly and slow meat more particularly is unstoppable because it is an ecological movement – everybody benefits from improving care for land, animals, and people. As we say at Jonai, you are what you eat, so eat ethically!’

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Want to Learn More? Connect with us!

Slow Meat Australia Facebook page

Slow Meat Symposium 2018 Facebook event page

Purchase Tickets on Eventbrite

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About AFSA

The Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance is a farmer-led collaboration of organisations and individuals working towards a food system in which everyone has the opportunity to access, create, and manage their food supply from paddock to plate. Food sovereignty asserts the right of peoples to nourishing and culturally appropriate food produced and distributed in ecologically sound and ethical ways, and their right to collectively determine their own food and agriculture systems. The Alliance’s purpose is to cooperate to create an equitable, sustainable and resilient food system for all Australians.

About Slow Food Central Highlands

Slow Food Central Highlands is part of the global Slow Food network – a grassroots organisation in 160 countries linking the pleasure of good food with a commitment to local communities and the environment. Slow Food seeks to preserve local food traditions and reignite people’s interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and the impact of their food choices.