Friday, March 29, 2024

Butcher a champ for women in trade

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The fact Cromwell butcher Jayne McMillan gets asked about the best way to cook a piece of meat now speaks more about her deep knowledge of red meat and what to do with it, than it does about any stereotyped idea because she’s a woman.
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Jayne McMillan is proud to be the face of She Looks Like Me – Aotearoa campaign to promote women in the meat industry.

The fact Cromwell butcher Jayne McMillan gets asked about the best way to cook a piece of meat now speaks more about her deep knowledge of red meat and what to do with it, than it does about any stereotyped idea because she’s a woman. She spoke with Richard Rennie.

Four years into owning The Fridge Butchery in the growing Otago town of Cromwell, Jayne McMillan is making a mark well beyond the region, heading up a quiet revolution in the meat sector to encourage more women to choose a career within it.

McMillan is the face of She Looks Like Me – Aotearoa, part of a global industry campaign to highlight female role models and point to career pathways for women keen to join the red meat sector.

She proves to be the ideal candidate to front such a campaign, straddling the industry with a breadth of experience stretching back 27 years and founded on a degree in microbiology that first had her working in the lab at Alliance’s Lorneville plant.

She also features in a video that covers a “day in the life” of the Cromwell butcher. In it she outlines a career that took her from the Lorneville plant to manage a lab at the Mataura works, then a two-year secondment to a quality control role with the New Zealand Lamb company based in Los Angeles.

This included guiding products through the assorted hoops that are United States Department of Agriculture regulations and on her return, she moved to a systems role at Alliance.

On spying the butchery for sale in Cromwell, she realised she had spent 26 years looking for her calling and had found it in the boutique Otago business.

“If I was looking back 26 years at my younger self when I started with Alliance, I guess at the time I did not have an absolute clear direction on where I wanted to be. But now 26 years on I am extremely happy and would not want to be anywhere else,” McMillan said.

This includes spending time not only in the butchery itself, but also calling on farmer supplies around the region and flying to Alliance’s Christchurch office to continue working in systems support as the company transitions to a new computing system.

While defined as a butchery, The Fridge reflects customers’ desire to better understand how to cook meat better and what to cook it with.

The business has grown to include assorted condiments and chutneys made in-house, cheeses, and even a vegan line of products.

With her deep understanding of microbiology, it is almost inevitable McMillan has pushed beyond the traditional chilled red meat products to include dry aged and lacto-fermented beef and salami products.

“The beauty of having a background in microbiology is that you know how far you can push products in terms of aging and storing,” she said.

Having spent plenty of time in meat processing plants, she also adds another dimension to clients using her home kill service.

“They were initially surprised when a woman turned up, but I am able to go through the offal with them and point out how well the stock are doing and if there are any issues that may be there. They appreciate that,” she said.

While not claiming to be doing much different to what male butchers may do, she notes some customers may feel more comfortable seeking cooking advice from her, despite many male butchers also being accomplished chefs.

Within the business she is opening pathways for more women to engage in butchery as a career. Of her five staff, four are women, including one she has taken on as an apprentice, and another proposed for the new year.

“There are a few other female butchers around NZ and the profile has been helped by A Lady Butcher. It would be great to see this network build and the campaign will do much to help that,” she said.

In the meantime, her advice to women considering a job in the sector is to “just do it”.

“My career has been so varied and I have had so many opportunities. It is awesome, I am loving it,” she said.

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