FEATURE
Canterbury focus for Firstlight grass-fed Wagyu Few dedicated carnivores, and even a few who waiver a bit, can resist the alluring scent of a good steak cooking. The smell brings a primeval promise with it, of sustenance and satisfaction, tapping into the deep primeval part of our caveman being when cooked meat was a hard fought, well-earned meal to be cherished. BY RICHARD RENNIE
Firstlight Wagyu attaches another story to its Wagyu beef products that runs parallel to that caveman passion for red meat. But the Firstlight story is one that also fits with a modern consumer’s desire to purchase quality food knowing where it has come from, and that rather than being hunted like the red meat sources of our forebears, it has been cared for and tended to over the course of its life. For Firstlight Wagyu its beef will now often begin life in the cradle of a Canterbury dairy farm, 2
RE AL FARM E R
before moving along a pathway to be reared and finished by a carefully developed network of beef farmers committed to being part of a system that delivers high value beef to discerning diners, both here and overseas. Firstlight Wagyu stems out of the innovative food company Firstlight Foods, which started business in 2003, known then only as “pipeline.” Managing director Gerard Hickey says the working title came from its founders’ desire to connect the farmers who grow animals for meat,
ABOVE: Peter Keeling, Firstlight Supply Chain Manager with Wagyu calves
to the consumers who eat it in a transparent, easily connected fashion. “It was a case of wanting to produce meat that meant the consumers who ate it could feel free to pick up the phone and talk to the people who grew it, if they had that urge,” he says. The company became most well-known for its Firstlight Venison products, with a high standard of animal welfare and farming.