Albert Mullen and his wife, Judy, at “Wallanbah”, Gloucester, along with a business partner, established Great Lakes Great Beef early this year when the third generation farmer and his treechanger mate decided to try their hand at direct marketing their meat.

He said the business ensured farmers had control of the product until it was in the buyer’s fridge.

Mr Mullen, a dairy operator until eight years ago, along with farmer and former Sydney corporate executive, Steve Attkins, are about to embark on a series of “focus group meetings” with suburban families in Sydney this month.

Customers will be sold quarter or half sides of grass-fed vealer beef.

Mr Mullen, whose part-time contract as a Landcare co-ordinator has just wrapped up, has turned to the Sydney market opportunity as a way of bolstering his farm income.

Meat from the Great Lakes partnership already goes to the Frederickton abattoir, near Kempsey, to be be slaughtered.

Carcases are hung using the gentler tender-stretch method, which suspends the carcase horizontally as opposed to vertically, a technique not widely used in Australia.

Product destined for the Sydney market would be sliced and bagged then couriered to Sydney in either a refrigerated trailer or a one-tonne truck with a slip-on fridge.

“Grain-fed beef is getting harder to produce due to high costs of production associated with grain shortages,” said Mr Mullen in describing the benefits of promoting his grass-fed line.

From The Land, July 3, 2008.