Chanda ranga: Ready Made Meal

Wednesday 8 August 2012

Ready Made Meal

Natuurvlees Dobbelaere is changing people's ideas about bio products. Most people in Belgium associate organic food shops with vegetarianism, but this wholesale meat supplier is slowly altering this misperception as they produce more than 50 organic meals for organic supermarkets and small shop all over Flanders.

"We even make our own natural salami," says Iwan Dobbelaere, one of the owners who has been working in the industry since he was a teenager. "We process 500 kilograms of cured meat every five weeks. We store it for three to four weeks, occasionally smoking it with Beachwood so the meat lasts longer and has a nice smell."
From turkey salami to Ardennes salami, Natuurvlees Dobbelaere produces seven types of hormone free, natural charcuterie. Iwan says you can see a difference in the meat. "There is a less of a sheen on cured meats. And with minced meat, the colour of naturally produced meat is much brighter and fresher," he explains. This means that when the meat is red, it is from being fed a variety of grains, not just corn (as is often the case in industrialised beef production).
That's only the beginning. In addition to making bio ready-made meals and natural salami, the company, based in West Flanders, butchers and processes 10 cows, 60 pigs and three pallets of chicken every week. Natuurvlees Dobbelaere gets it chickens from the Netherlands but its pig and cow arrive locally from East and West Flanders. The two pig farms and two cow farms work exclusively with the Dobbelaere family and are producing animals in accordance to the strict rules needed to label as natural or bio.