a day ago
Listen: 5th quarter ‘one of the biggest losses in the Irish diet'
'They say in the Irish diet, one of the biggest losses in the last decade is the fifth quarter as you call it – all your kidney, oxtail, all that kind of meat, because you're getting different nutrients out of it.'
That is according to brothers Martin and Declan Flood who are running a second-generation family-owned butcher shop in Oldcastle, Co. Meath.
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Commenting on the use of offal cuts in diets, Martin said: 'It declined, but now it's back up on the rise bigtime again for body and bone health.
'Oldcastle has a lot of eastern Europeans living in it and they're way ahead of us in terms of their knowledge of the iron value of liver.
'There's other values that maybe tongue or heart would have and all our hearts, liver, tongue, they're all sold within a couple of days of bringing them in here in to the shop.'
The butcher shop offers a range of fresh meats from mince to steak and everything in between. The beef used in the shop is predominantly all Angus and Hereford beef with good marbling, which is proving popular with their customer-base.
Declan said: 'We have our own fully licenced slaughterhouse just out the road. We are probably one of only a couple now in the Co. Meath that actually slaughter – there's very few doing it.
'We kill there two days every week. We kill for the shop here and we kill for local farmers and farmers from surrounding counties with deep-freeze animals that bring their lambs or heifers to us.
'We slaughter them, bring them in here to the shop, cut them up, bag them, and put them in a freezer ready to go.'
The brothers recently featured on an episode of the Agriland Beef Brief podcast where they discussed beef farming, fattening, finishing, and all things meat-related as well as changing consumer trends and customer preferences in their butcher shop.
