Kent Start-up Food & Drink Finalist 2022: Oink & Udder

Our aim at Oink and Udder is to champion high-welfare meat and to demonstrate a different way of farming. We believe in the value of quality ingredients traceable back to their source. We want to reconnect customers with their food and where it comes from while providing the best products possible.

Our history is an unusual one for the owners of a butchery business. We have both spent the majority of our lives as vegetarians; this only changed after we started keeping goats for milk and decided to have a spit-roasted goat for our wedding. We believe our previous diet has had a big impact on Oink and Udder. We are passionate about reconnecting people to the animals behind their meat as this is the only true way to know if it has been kept to a good-enough standard. Our nose-to-tail attitude also stems from being veggie as we insist on wasting as little as possible. This goes all the way to our range of dog treats using the bits humans don't want! Pooches go mad for our dehydrated pig's ears and offal based treats and we can sleep easy knowing each animal was used as fully as possible.

We believe animals can be used to improve the land they are on if the right husbandry techniques are applied. All grazing animals are moved regularly with long rest periods for each piece of ground enabling the grass to sequester carbon into the soil. Even our pigs' natural tendencies to dig can be used to our advantage and have created veg patches, added organic matter to poor soil and most recently mixed sand from a freshly-dug borehole back into the ground around it. All this saves man hours and diesel on a digger while giving the pigs a purpose. The next challenge for them is to regenerate the undergrowth of a local woodland by turning the soil and removing brambles to allow the seed bed a chance to develop.