KITLIVING
Continued over
the dairy billy goat meat industry which
will see events taking place all over the
country.
Sue Quinn interviewed Fiona Gerardin
at Bere Marsh Farm for The Guardian in
2014, who said, "Goat meat is a niche
market that's becoming more popular.
It's healthy, low-cholesterol, and very
tender and lean, and can be cooked
like lamb or venison. Happy animals
raised with minimum stress and lots of
care make tasty meat, so welfare is the
most important thing for me. I spend
a lot of time with the goats, observing
and learning when they are content or
unhappy. They're not as hardy as sheep,
and have to be housed at night in wet
or damp weather and let out to graze in
the day in the spring and early summer.
They're delightful and intelligent animals,
but they have a penchant for escaping."
Good food
At London-based Gourmet Goat (www.
gourmetgoat.co.uk), run by Nadia and
Nick Stokes, they say: "Many tens of
thousands of dairy billies are slaughtered
each year shortly after birth. These are
the billies that help the goat dairy industry
thrive. We feel this is a tragedy and are
supporting suppliers who take the billies
from the dairy industry and send them
to responsible farms to be reared and
ultimately sold for their meat."
Raised in Cyprus, when she came
to the UK as a student Nadia searched
for the ingredients to make dishes that
she was familiar with from her home
country but found goat meat hard to
source. She says, "A deep desire to
cook professionally and more importantly
recreate East Mediterranean village dishes
led us to create Gourmet Goat. Given the
strength of the kid goat dairy industry, why
was it that a glorious meat enjoyed by so
many other countries was being culled?"
Gourmet Goat is now an awardwinning food business using unique
sustainable ingredients and sustainable
practices that have meant they are
ranked as one of the top 20 sustainable
restaurants as listed by Food Made
Good from the Sustainable Restaurant
Association part of the sustainable food
movement. They also point out on their
website, that data provided by U.S
Department of Agriculture (USDA) shows
that goat meat has the lowest amount of
saturated fat and cholesterol than other
meats cooked in a similar way.
Diary wary
Goats' milk contains significantly more
selenium than cows' milk, which boosts
the human immune system. The zinc in
goats' milk is also more readily absorbed
into the body than from cows' milk, and
a glass of goats' milk contains more
NUTRITION
Goat meat per 100g, roasted:
3g fat, 0 carbs, 27g protein. Per cent
daily values based on a 2,000 calorie
diet 20% Vitamin B, 20% iron, 25%
cholesterol, 11% potassium.