beef
What Is a New Zealand Cow Given in Its Lifetime?
Nobody is hiding what your beef was given. Nobody is telling you either. I went looking for the record and found a form that only asks about right now.
beef
Why Is Beef Mince So Expensive in New Zealand?
I stood in front of the mince cabinet and photographed the shelf tags. The cheapest was $21.99 a kilo. The most expensive was $33.98. Both were mince.
NZ Grown Grains
Four Cents a Loaf: What the NZ Grown Grains Mark Buys You
Three-quarters of New Zealand's bread is made from imported grain. A certification trademark launched in 2025 to shift that, at a premium of about four cents a loaf. That four cents buys a paddock. It does not buy a mill or a malthouse, and the rule that defines the logo has never been made public.
organic vegetables
Live2Give Hired a Mixer Wagon to Mulch Its Onions. Now It Is Coming to Auckland.
Live2Give grows organic vegetables at Aokautere, backloads other growers' produce on its chilled truck, labels its own non-organic lines as non-organic, and starts delivering to Auckland on 3 September.
bread
I Went Looking for Why Bread Needs an Emulsifier. I Found a Process from 1961.
I started with a small question about the emulsifiers on a supermarket loaf and ended up at a 1961 British process that replaces three hours of fermentation with eleven watt-hours of mixing energy. Almost every additive on that label is the bill for the missing time.
organic certification
The $10,000 Line That Decides Which Organic Growers Get Checked
There is a number in New Zealand's organic rules that almost nobody outside the sector knows about. It decides which growers get independently checked and which ones are trusted to get it right on their own. That number is up for debate until 22 September, and you can have a say.
bread
Bürgen Is Gone. Two Companies Own Nearly All The Rest.
Bürgen left New Zealand shelves in August 2026 and the replacement lists went up within a day. Nobody asked who makes the alternatives. Nineteen loaves, two owners, and independent testing that points the opposite way to the nutrition advice.
queenstown
Queenstown -The Last Organic Shop in Town
Huckleberry's gone. Wise Cicada's gone. Independent organic retail is dying fastest in NZ's biggest city — yet a small shop in a Frankton mall survives by serving eight regions at once. What its survival reveals about what "organic" is really worth in Central Otago.
organic certification
Grow, Feed, Certify? Royalburn and the Word Nobody Owns Yet
On the Crown Terrace, Nadia Lim and Carlos Bagrie's Royalburn Station has redefined "good food" for a whole region — regenerative, spray-free, organic. But with NZ's organic law not in force until 2028, what does that word actually guarantee a shopper today?
food labelling
Wacky Wednesday at the Supermarket
I went to the shop on a Wednesday at three, and the very first thing that was wacky to me was a chicken, all pink, wrapped in plastic and bright, that had bathed in some chlorine to keep it just right. A homage to a certain Wednesday book — and five wacky things hiding in plain sight.
chicken
Every chicken in New Zealand is eating GM soy
New Zealanders eat 40 kilos of chicken a year. Every supermarket bird has spent its life on Argentine GM soy sprayed with glyphosate, which the WHO calls a probable carcinogen. Bayer has paid US$11bn settling cancer cases while insisting the chemical is safe. Here's what's actually in your chicken.
Bacon
There's an 80% chance the bacon you eat is imported. And you didn't even know.
Most people in New Zealand who eat bacon for breakfast have no idea their bacon isn't from New Zealand. The strange part is the packet is technically telling them — they've just been trained not to read it. Here's what's behind the "Made in New Zealand from local and imported ingredients" line.
