Take a farmer, a vet, a marketer, a barrister, and a chef, all passionate about animal welfare and the provenance of the meat we eat. The result is Provenir, Australia’s first mobile on-farm abattoir. Kim Berry spoke with co-founder Chris Balazs.
On 20 June, at a farm in NSW’s Riverina district, Provenir became the first on-farm licenced abattoir in Australia. “We realised our dream of being able to produce high welfare beef,” co-founder Chris Balazs says. The company is the only one in the country allowed to process meat on a farm and then commercially sell it to consumers, chefs and retailers.
Provenir’s vertically integrated, on-farm processing technology is designed to improve animal welfare, progress sustainable farming practices, and guarantee full traceability, provenance and excellent meat quality. It has been five years in the making and raised more than $1 million in an initial equity call.
“Quite simply it’s an abattoir that resides in a semi-trailer. It’s a mobile process unit that goes to the farm,” Balazs says.
“We went with a WA engineering company through tender for the fitout but a lot of the process itself is the same as any other abattoir. The unique value proposition is that we do it on the farm so there is minimal stress on the animal and therefore a better quality of beef.
“There is a clever design, but the process we have to go through has all the same steps and assurances for food safety, training, and everything else an abattoir has to meet. There’s no special dispensation,” Balazs says.
