Surplus venison feeds thousands

Social enterprise butchery launched in Perthshire

A Perthshire farmer has opened what she describes as the world’s first social enterprise butcher’s shop, the latest step in a project that has already supplied the equivalent of 20,000 meals to families in food poverty from culled wild venison.

Helen Stewart launched Fair Feast after taking over Knockbarry Farm, which her family has worked for more than 400 years, to find the land carrying around 650 red deer – a density of 47 animals per square kilometre and approaching five times the recommended maximum. With no natural predators to control numbers, Ms Stewart said culling was unavoidable, but she was troubled by how much high-quality meat was going to waste while families nearby could not afford protein.

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Turning cull into community food supply

Fair Feast processes culled venison into sausages, mince, burgers and meatballs for food banks and community larders, while selling premium cuts to local restaurants to fund the operation. In its first year the project supplied around two tonnes to recipients across Highland Perthshire, supported by a grant from the Cairngorms 2030 programme, backed by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

The shop on Pitlochry’s Atholl Road, which bears the claim ‘world’s first social enterprise butchery shop’ on its frontage, is intended to generate steadier commercial income and ensure surplus stock reaches food banks consistently throughout the year.

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Rising demand for emergency food support

The shop opens as Trussell’s network of food banks distributed almost 220,000 emergency food parcels across Scotland in 2025, one every two and a half minutes, with families with children receiving more than half.

“Food banks are at an all-time high for demand,” Ms Stewart said. “Sometimes we are dropping off 100 packs of venison, and it feels like a drop in the ocean. But when we have food surpluses and people who are hungry, it really becomes a matter of redistribution.

“If we can donate tens of thousands of meals from just one farm, imagine what could happen if that was rolled out across Scotland.”