From the Series
It seems unlikely that a meat merchant would be encouraging society to eat less meat. But for food designer, blogger and butchery owner Andy Fenner, meat consumption is about eating less, better quality meat so that farmers aren't forced to pump their animals full of growth hormones to speed up the production process.
The owner of Frankie Fenner Meat Merchants sources meat from small, independent farms where the animals are grass-fed, and displays it in his shop in as natural a state as possible (read: blood, gore).
He believes in serving meat, trotters and all: taking a literally holistic serving approach instead of doing the "frilly stuff to the meat".
That's design in itself, he says.
His six-point "Meat Manifesto" – apart from emphasising that the animals are ethically reared – aims to get consumers to take a mindful approach to the act of eating meat.
"It's really just to get people to stop putting stuff in their mouth and in their body without thinking about what happened before it arrived on that plate," he says. To challenge the way people think about meat: seeing the meat not only as its end product (beef, pork), but making the connection to where it came from (cows, pigs).
We also need to go back to considering the purchase, preparation and consumption of meat as people did in times gone by, instead of "whacking it in the pan without giving it the attention it deserves," he says.
