Venison stoush positive for the Deer Industry

Because of it's size, the Deer industry has often had to punch above its weight, and this story shows it making the best of any opportunity.

Marketing dollars are always hard to come by especially as deer  slaughter numbers have reduced significantly this year.

With its venison products selling at the top end of the meat trade, any issue that taints the brand can be damaging, and quick thinking by the team at DINZ, turned a negative into a positive. It's often the perception not the facts that sour the consumer, and critics have used the food miles argument in this way.

Being organised and prompt nipped this issue in the bud and gave them a bonus of lots of free publicity for NZ venison.

A storm in a frypan row between a judge and a chef on the American Top Chef Masters television show over the environmental credentials of New Zealand venison could have been a disaster for NZ. But quick thinking by Deer Industry New Zealand has turned it into a marketing coup reports Business Day.

Top Chef is a cooking competition. The Masters is a contest between some of America's top restaurant chefs, and in the final Las Vegas chef Rick Moonen chose to cook a dish of NZ venison. All the judges raved about it, but Moonen lost by half a mark, the narrowest possible margin.

It wasn't until the next day that the reason for the loss emerged. British judge Jay Rayner, a food writer notorious for his acid tongue, blogged that he marked down Moonen for his "craven attitude to environmental issues". Moonen is an outspoken critic of unsustainable ocean fishing and Rayner regarded the use of venison as hypocritical because, he wrongly claimed, it was airfreighted to the United States.

The row then erupted into the social media on Twitter and Facebook. This is where Deer Industry NZ excelled. Marketing manager Innes Moffat told me that the organisation follows American food blogs closely. An alert went out when the Top Chef final, with Moonen's use of venison, was broadcast. Moonen has first-hand knowledge of the New Zealand deer industry. He was an ambassador chef for our venison, marketed in the US as Cervena, in the 1990s, had demonstrated its cooking in hotels and restaurants and had visited deer farms here.

Within a few minutes of being alerted of Rayner's blog, Deer Industry NZ sent Moonen fact sheets on food miles and sustainability. "It's a pretty big market and anything that lifts our profile in a good way like this has to be of benefit," Mr Moffat says. "But when the social media get hold of an issue you have to react very quickly. Facebook is often people's first port of call when people want to know what other people are thinking on an issue and we have operated a Cervena page for some time now so we can be part of that conversation."

There's a lesson here for other industries that have been on the receiving end lately of misinformed or malignant comments. Retaliate quickly and the facts can triumph over adversity.