“The ones I don’t buy will be dead tomorrow; the ones I do will be heading to one of the most biodiverse areas of farming habitat in the country in a few days’ time. It’s a sheep’s paradise,” Matt Chatfield enthuses down the phone from a market near his home, where he is bidding against abattoirs for spent ewes. Today, Chatfield will be a kind of sheep god; the man who chooses which ewes will spend six months on his rich woodland pasture in Cornwall, doing nothing but eating, sleeping, strolling and eating some more. After a long and exhausting life of lambing and milking, Chatfield’s farm The Cornwall Project is like a retirement home for old ewes.
Except, of course, that it isn’t. They are all killed eventually. The Cornwall Project isn’t a charity, but one of a growing number of farms that are looking to add value to female cows, goat and sheep after their ‘working’ (that is, birthing and milking) lives, and prior to slaughter; who believe that if we are going to farm animals for food, they should be valued in their entirety and treated with respect. The animals are selected at the farms – or, as Chatfield is doing whilst chatting to me, at a live market, put out to pasture and left to graze for months or even years before winding up, via a decent butcher, in the hands of some of the best chefs in the country.
The process cannot be hurried. As Nemanja Borjanovic, founder of meat supplier Txuleta and the man partly responsible for kickstarting the trend for ex-dairy beef in the UK, points out, “You have to eat a lot of grass to get the calories required to accumulate fat, and for that fat to enter the muscle and become intermuscular fat.” Fat is flavour – and the fat that comes from grass is more flavourful still, because it has accumulated beta-carotene, which is what gives it that yellowish, buttery hue. By the time spent ewes reach Chatfield, or ex-dairy cows reach the farms that supply Txuleta, they are exhausted: bone-thin and worn ragged by back-to-back pregnancies and being milked at an industrial scale. “It’s a crap life, and a short lifespan, if they’re then killed once they stop being fertile. At least this way they get a retirement,” Chatfield argues – though he is wary, as are all the farmers, butchers and chefs I speak to, of using the word ‘ethical’ in relation to meat.
Cobble Lane Cured uses retired breeding sows to produce its coppa
Cobble Lane Cured uses retired breeding sows to produce its coppa
The focus is on flavour – that, and the environmental argument that if you’re going to farm animals, with the ecological impact that entails, it’s better that they are dual purpose: farmed for quality dairy or lambs, then culled for quality meat. To this, Chatfield would add that the soil’s capacity to sequester carbon is greatly increased when planted with diverse herbs, grasses and trees – and grazed by ruminants, whose manure further enrich and increases the carbon-storing potential of the soil. Many of the farms where these ‘retired’ animals spend their twilight years practise regenerative agriculture: a way of farming that focuses on increasing biodiversity, improving the water cycle and improving the quality of the topsoil.
The flavour’s the key, though. “The older the animal is, the more it’s moved, the more flavour in its muscle – so the meat is incredible,” says Ian Warren, owner incumbent of butcher Philip Warren, which is deservedly renowned for its grass-fed meat and support for regenerative farmers like Chatfield. “It’s got real depth and length,” says Borjanovic, who was the first to bring beef over from the Basque Country, where they leave their dairy cows out to pasture to fatten before slaughter – sometimes until they are as old as 17.
The intense, succulent steaks took Marylebone by storm when he served them in his high-end Spanish restaurants Donostia and Lurra, then sold them on to Chiltern Firehouse and other restaurants via Txuleta. In 2017 he decided to find Basque-style beef in Britain: collaborating with dairy farmers in Yorkshire, where the altitude and lush pastures were on a par with northern Spain, and where farmers are on their knees on account of collapsing milk prices – and it wasn’t long before others followed suit.
Soil’s capacity to sequester carbon is greatly increased when grazed by ruminants
Since then, it’s fair to say the interest in older meats has exploded. Brett Graham, executive chef at the iconic and newly reopened The Ledbury and director at The Harwood Arms, has his own farm of Jersey cows. In Cumbria, Lake District Farmers fatten their dairy cows for five to nine months on their windswept moors. In mid-Wales, Tom Jones (not that one) does the same with sheep and cows; while Cabrito, the goat meat supplier that made its name salvaging the male kid goats born into the dairy industry and culled at birth, has since added old nanny goats to the mix.
Nor is the trend confined to ruminants: Islington charcutier Cobble Lane uses retired breeding sows to produce its coppa. These older sows would normally get transported to the continent, but Matt Hills at Cobble Lane has found one of the few abattoirs in the UK that can process an animal the size of a sow, and finds it makes for an even more luscious – not to mention larger – cut of charcuterie.
Back at the Ledbury and Graham’s pub, The Harwood Arms, he and head chef Jake Leach use old laying ducks to make charcuterie in house. “The meat is really chewy and tough,” he says, “but we can cure the legs and confit the breasts for eight hours and use the carcasses for stocks and sauces.” It’s not something you can roast – not if you want anything edible out of it – but there are many other ways of utilising this cheap and flavourful meat. “The average life of a hen or duck bred for meat in this country is 54 days. These are alive for two and a half years. They have so much more flavour,” says chef Will Murray, who is looking into incorporating spent hens into the menu at his restaurant Fallow alongside the mutton and dairy cow he already uses. “We produce tonnes of old hens in this country. The meat is cheaper than carrots. It’s an unbelievable resource.”
Matt Chatfield farms old ewes to create his inimitable cull yaw, favoured by chefs around the country
Matt Chatfield farms old ewes to create his inimitable cull yaw, favoured by chefs around the country
So where was this meat going before these farmers, butchers and chefs came along? Why haven’t we been eating it? The short answer is, we have been. Spent hens go into stock cubes; spent ducks are transported to Asia for consumption. Cheap kebabs, burgers, and mince in ready meals might all contain dairy beef or ex-lambing sheep. They’re the ones people like Chatfield and Borjanovic don’t buy, who go straight from working to slaughter, without being fattened on retirement farms. That’s why they’re so plentiful and cheap. “There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s safe and fine, and they need to do it to feed the nation,” argues Warren – but there’s no currently no formal way for consumers to know this; to know that the ‘beef’ in their ready meals comes from knackered dairy cows; to know that the dairy beef in a supermarket burger is not the same as an old Jersey steak at The Ledbury; and to make an informed choice according to what they like, can afford or believe to be worth buying.
“They don’t need to know for food safety; they need to know for quality, and because beef farmers are on their knees,” says Warren. “If I grow grapes on a vineyard and they are a special variety, and I grow them for longer and age the wine for years, people can see that on the label, and choose whether they want to spend their money on it. There’s no such differentiation.” And yet Borjanovic, Philip Warren and the farmers that supply them, go to great lengths to ensure the dairy beef and mutton – which he, Chatfield and many others call cull yaw, ‘yaw’ being Cornish slang for eye and ‘cull’ referring to their usual fate after they’ve stopped milking – that they provide restaurants is of the best possible quality. “It’s the breed, the husbandry, the diet, the lifestyle. Realistically, you’re putting fresh flesh and fat on a seven-year-old bone structure, that has not been used to carrying much flesh. You’ve got to be savvy with it. It’s not just about having an old cow,” says Borjanovic, any more than it is about having old sheep.
For a start, you need the fat covering, as Borjanovic has pointed out – and the best fat covering takes time, lush pastures and ideally – so far as dairy beef is concerned – a dual-purpose cow. The reason Brett Graham favours ex-dairy beef from old Jersey cows is because they are suited to both dairy and meat. They are well suited to British climate and British pasture, so build up a decent fat covering with time – “and you need the fat covering for dry ageing,” says Warren, who ages Graham’s Jersey’s and Chatfield’s ewes on site in Philip Warren’s two chillers: one with normal humidity to encourage bacterial growth and activate the enzymes’ calpain proteins, which work to deteriorate the meat; then another, drier fridge, which they put that meat in after three weeks to slow everything down, reduce the moisture content and intensify the flavour of the meat.
We produce tonnes of old hens in this country. The meat is cheaper than carrots
The result is exceptional: a deeply flavoured, highly nutritious (because of the grass diet) and almost pungent meat that is a far cry from your usual beef or lamb, and not to everyone’s taste. “It’s a different profile. If you have a guest who appreciates flavour and depth, then by all means serve this beef, but you can’t expect someone who likes a tender, mild fillet steak with peppercorn sauce to be into it,” says Borjanovic – any more than you’d expect someone who likes a pinot noir to be into a heavy cabernet sauvignon.
Dairy goat also has a pronounced flavour and, because goats don’t fatten so well as sheep or cows, a texture better suited to slow-cooked dishes. ‘Uncompromising’ was the verdict on Chatfield’s cull yaw, from chefs and food writers to whom he sent samples last year; hardly a word which suggests it’s about to explode onto the mass market. Yet while few of the chefs or suppliers I speak to think mutton or dairy cows and goats can or should become mainstream, all agree that they need to go beyond niche.
“What we’re about is celebrating the ewe or dairy cow as an ingredient, rather than a cheap way to bolster the food system,” says Murray. Sure, you could argue it’s no more sustainable or ethical than them ending up on in a supermarket freezer aisle – but is that really the best use of what could, with some time, be better and more nutritious meat? “If we have a food resource that is plentiful, we should utilise it in the best way possible. How much better to give someone tasty, nutritious food from a waste product than for it to make its way onto an Iceland pizza?” says Murray. It’s not more ethical necessarily, “but it’s the by-product of another arguably unethical process. At least by taking it and highlighting it, we can add value.” This value comes nutritionally, but also financially to dairy and lamb farmers who are already struggling in an increasingly punishing industry.
Fallow restaurant incorporates ex-dairy cows and mutton on its menu
Fallow restaurant incorporates ex-dairy cows and mutton on its menu
“It’s a desperate thing,” says James Lowe, owner and executive chef of Lyle’s and one of first proponents of cull yaw in London. “It’s why so many dairy farmers have gone into cheesemaking – because they get more money than they would selling milk to supermarkets, and their cattle for cheap burgers.” Already, those farmers who are selling their dairy cows onto people like Borjanovic and Warren are feeling the benefit. “We were paying next to nothing at first – it was so easy to offer a much better price than the abattoir would pay. Now the beef is appreciated on such a greater level, they are charging more for it,” says Borjanovic. They’re victims of their own success – albeit willingly so.
After all, it’s not like farmers’ lives are getting any easier, being at the sharpest point of the punishing price rises in fuel, grain and fertiliser. Indeed, in some instances the rising interest in retired animals is starting to count against them, as less conscientious chefs take advantage.
“What drives Tom and farmers like him absolutely wild is when restaurants put their meat on the menu because it’s trendy and looks good,” says Lowe, “then when they can’t maintain a consistent supply they just stop buying it and keep the name.” He cites a recent example of a restaurant he went to three weeks in a row, which featured an ex-dairy bavette rib on the menu each time. “There’s no way they can do that. There isn’t the supply,” he says. The frequency with which prime cuts of ex-dairy beef appear on some menus suggest proprietors are either bending the truth or taking an irresponsible approach to balancing the carcass: one of the biggest challenges faced by butchers like Warren.
A dairy cow is an ingredient, not a cheap way to bolster the food system
“At the moment, we sell the Jersey shins and featherblades to high-end restaurants, the topsides and silversides to a high-end charcuterie producer and any excess goes into a burger, which can’t be a premium product because no one is going to pay a premium for burgers,” Waren explains. Supplying featherblades and shins to restaurants on a large scale would inevitably mean more burgers and pies, because there’s only so much meat a charcuterie producer can take on – and that would eventually result in their making a loss on the venture. “Producing dairy beef is an expensive process, and unless we can shift the whole carcass with a premium on it, it doesn’t make sense.”
That’s the reason Lowe has so much mutton on his menu at Lyle’s. “It’s not because I want this to become a trend. It’s because one of my biggest drivers, when I meet farmers in tune with my ideals, is to make sure we support them as much as possible. That means buying and using the whole carcass, whenever they have it. It means finding a system that works around them.” Does Lowe think it’s a good thing that people are becoming more aware of older meats? “Absolutely,” he says, “but I’m wary of people leaping onto the bandwagon without understanding it. It’s the right direction, but it only works if people approach it with the same integrity they’d apply to other things.”
In short, it’s not as simple as making old meat mainstream. There are issues around supply, demand and education. As Murray and Leach have pointed out, trying to render old duck, pig or chicken edible takes time, skill and equipment far beyond that which the average consumer will possess. Even prime cuts of dairy cow and ewe – fattened and tender though they are – would phase all the but most confident cook. Warren doesn’t want a retail customer buying the leg of a ten-year-old dairy cow unless they know what they’re doing, he explains. “I’d rather they take a heifer, so it’s tender and they enjoy it.”
Ultimately, what restaurants like Lurra, Lyle’s, The Harwood Arms and Fallow offer is a safe and delicious space in which diners can learn more about farming, its merits and implications. The hope is the appearance of unfamiliar names like laying duck, cull yaw and dairy cow will invite discussion of the food system in which we all partake. Wanting lamb every spring, without thought of the ewes that give birth to them; eggs and milk at cheap prices without thought of the cows and hens; meat with mild, easy flavours, because the animal it comes from lived only a fraction of its life expectancy before being killed – these are the assumptions which the ‘retired’ animals movement calls into question. As for using the word ‘retired’ – or indeed whether a longer life for the animal adds up to an ethical act, even if there’s still an abrupt end eventually – as with any question about the morals of meat, there’s probably no one right answer; it all comes down to how you slice it.
