Restaurants
From kitchen gardens in Queenstown to biodynamic vineyards in Waipara, five restaurants bringing organic food closer to the table. One has three answers to how much food it grows. One floors its kitchen with old car tyres. And the meat tells a different story from the vegetables.
pork
A parliamentary committee found bacon labelling could mislead consumers. Three years on, the government has confirmed nothing will change. Here's the regulatory fight, and what compliant welfare standards actually cost a NZ pig farm.
pork
A reader questioned the Woolworths recommendation in my bacon awards piece. Fair challenge. So I pulled the thread: one farm, a sale almost nobody covered, an anonymous factory, and a cure that burns in the pan. The welfare label is real. It also stops at the farm gate. Here's the rest.
pork
Every winner at the 2026 Bacon and Ham Awards was born and raised in New Zealand. A few are free range, the best welfare you can confirm. But free range tells you how the pig lived, not what it ate, and almost no label answers the feed question. The winners worth buying, and two we left off.
pork
What got me was the short ingredients list and the words "nitrate free" — then I learned most bacon sold here is imported. So I went looking for Woody, and found a rescue dog, a farm that nearly failed, and a chain of people two ranges away who actually raise the pig.
pork
Sixty percent of pork in New Zealand is imported. Over eighty percent of bacon and ham. So who's growing the rest? The answer is fifty-eight farms — fewer than the country has Pak'nSave stores. Here's who they are, who makes the best bacon and ham from their pork, and where to buy it.
Bacon
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.
