Dec 20, 2024
DINZ chatted with Daniel Carson, founder of meat snack start-up Mīti, about adding value, possible plans for venison, the importance of narrative, and challenging the status quo.
Mīti produces beef bites, sourced from non-replacement calves (bobby calves), an unwanted by-product of the dairy industry. As young beef raised to 10-months, however, they have a low carbon footprint and offer four times the amount per kg currently paid to farmers for the calves, which usually go into pet food.
Daniel Carson
DINZ: Let's start with your elevator pitch for Mīti, which I’m sure you have given many times along the way.
DC: It does change a bit, depending on the audience. I spend a lot of time talking to farmers about systems change, whereas the actual Mīti product is essentially just a demonstration use case of that systems change. Mīti is a sustainable high-protein beef snack that's as good for you as it is for the planet, all backed up by science.
We can prove all of our low carbon claims, all the way through manufacturing, and we've also proven the “good for you” part through our gut health and health science. It's designed to be an all-natural high-protein and energy health snack verified by science.
DINZ: How did Mīti get started?
DC: Being introduced to farming later in life through bull beef taught me how little I knew, as I didn’t grow up on a farm, but using a management through measurement approach I was able to learn quickly, aided by data and incorporating technology. I had previously worked in technology for large corporations and could see so many opportunities in terms of ways to bring agriculture and technology together to help production and tell better stories through consumer packed red meat snacks.
So I reached out to a friend of mine from university, Hugh Good, who was the Consumer Insights Manager at Beef + Lamb NZ, and I told him what my thinking was. Hugh came on board early.
After that, we got a small grant through AGMARDT [Agriculture and Marketing Research and Development Trust], which was for a proof of concept with Otago University. That proof of concept was based on adding shelf-life to a meat product using natural methods – in our case, honey. Most meat products use nitrates or preservatives or a lot of salt or they're super dry. There's a reason why this hasn't been done, which is that it’s a bit harder to do.
Anyway, we got the proof of concept that yes, we could, and that it bonded well, and the flavour profile was actually pretty interesting. So then we were fortunate enough to be able to scale up and get some funding from MPI. They funded us to do a lot more, like get Dr Lily Liu, our food technologist, on board to refine the product through to shelf-life testing, as well as create some branding.
Now, a lot of that money was predicated on the fact that we were using these non-replacement calves or these younger type animals, so they weren't necessarily funding the product; they were funding an exploration of use, or the ingredient that we were using in the product.
Ultimately, they were funding the idea behind it more so than they were the product itself.
DINZ: In our earlier conversations, you mentioned possible plans for venison, and that you had run trials with two processors previously, Alliance and Duncan NZ. What are your plans for venison going forward?
DC: Because we use what is essentially a ground beef base, we can use a ground version of any protein. The key for us is lean protein. We don't want the fat. Venison was always our second cab off the rank, so to speak, though our focus at the moment is beef.
Something which I think is worth mentioning is that we process our animals pre-winter to reduce farm and environmental costs. We turn all of the muscle cuts into a ground ingredient, and then we produce a product from that. So, for a lot of farmers, it would obviously help them not have to winter their animals if the weights are there and they want them off farm.
Venison processing chains are perfect for the weight and age of animal that we kill, and there's no competition for space because the venison industry is not flat-out killing pre-winter. Post-winter, yes, but pre-winter there's heaps of space available, so it helps with plant utilisation.
And another thing, and this is probably getting slightly off topic, but another thing for the venison industry is that currently, because of the focus, like with the rest of the meat industry, on muscle cuts, you're trying to hit markets at certain times of the year, which is why you're not killing all year round. One of the biggest issues that the venison industry has is the environmental footprint, and a lot of that comes from having to hold animals through winter, even though you're not putting any weight on them, because you're waiting for the timing of kill.
Whereas for something like what we do, because you can turn the whole thing into an added value good or product, we can take those animals before winter. We can kill them when it works best for farmers to get them off farm. By using them in these added value foods, then everything opens up. It solves a lot of these industry problems where we've been stuck with systems based on markets.
There's a massive opportunity here. The convenience meat snacks industry is projected to grow around 7 percent annually to nearly US$30 billion by 2030. People in New Zealand just don’t think about meat snacks like they do in other countries. You can add other unique ingredients that are part of the New Zealand story, which gives you a point of difference in the market. If you were to mix venison with, say, blackcurrant, like what Ārepa uses, then you are trading on both of those functional food benefits.
DINZ: How easy would it be to put velvet into something like this?
DC: Pretty easy, I’d say. It’s just a dried powder, right? As long as you make it taste good. What’s more, people are already prepared to pay a premium for these individual things, but to get it all in one, in a convenient pack, and it’s got nice flavor to it? Then the world’s your oyster.
It's just then a matter of being able to prove functionality through science, because health claims are regulated. But the science is available, and it's only going to get cheaper.
DINZ: How important is it to tell the story behind the product, and what stories should New Zealand be telling?
DC: I guess it all depends on the product. In New Zealand, I think we probably try and hide too much from the consumer as far as this animal is born and then it dies, but I think we've got a real opportunity to tell the story of the quality of life that it lived along the way.
Running around on clean, green pasture, with these beautiful mountains or lakes in the background, and you know, just be a bit more honest that, yes, it's going to die, but you're eating this animal that's had a great, healthy life.
Be realistic that these are production animals, but they're not growing up in factory farms or things like that. There's a big move in the U.S. to venison and elk and bison, grass-fed because of perceptions around wilder, more “natural” protein, shifting away from grain-fed and all that goes with it.
And then there’s the growing conversation around the importance of protein. Not as a marbled steak in a restaurant, but as a health building block. And that isn’t just middle age. There's a massive opportunity in the children's lunchbox market. You think of what proteins go in there. Usually cheese. Meats are often high in salt, or nitrates. For the elderly, with the relative softness of ground meat, there is disruptive innovation possible in all these categories combined with the right functional ingredients.
DINZ: As an agribusiness startup, how hard was it to get funding? And what does New Zealand do well, in an agribusiness sense, and what could we do better?
DC: Funding is there if you collaborate, and you can bring enough different players with their individual strengths to a project so that funding bodies, such as MPI, like it. You end up with a project where all parts of the the value chain can contribute in their own way. Then you don't necessarily need to have this big cash amount up front because everyone's bringing their own expertise and specialist skills.
And if you're solving a problem or using a waste stream, then it is relatively straightforward to get funding for science. Though when I say straightforward, nothing is that straightforward. So the funding is there for the science; where there's no funding is for product development.
In our case, we are using a waste stream and trying to add value to it, so we were able to get funding from that perspective, but if we just wanted to make a meat snack out of existing beef? No chance.
The new government seems very focused on commercialisation of science outcomes, so if it's more than just a research project, one that's going to turn into essentially export receipts, then it will have a great chance of getting off the ground.
What does New Zealand agriculture do well and not well at the moment? Well, they’re quite good at maintaining the status quo. Lots of people and companies are looking at ways to carry on, business as usual, with a methane inhibitor expense passed to the farmer, but we can’t keep doing what we’ve always done. Not in this fast-changing world.
I don't think there's enough money going into adding value onshore and building brands. But we need to make sure that everybody in the value chain comes along for the ride and shares in that value. I can't get anyone to give a **** about bobby calves or 10-month-old dairy beef unless they see a return in it for themselves, and fair enough.
But yeah, I'm quite excited for the future. New Zealand needs a kick in the pants. There's nothing coming to save us at the moment, is there?
