> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.organicfoodtogether.nz/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Where to Buy Organic Beef in New Zealand - URL: https://www.organicfoodtogether.nz/where-to-buy-organic-beef-in-new-zealand/ - Published: 2026-09-01T18:31:15.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-02T20:06:23.000Z - Description: There is certified organic beef in New Zealand supermarkets. Most people walk past it, because the brand that sells it also sells five kinds of beef that aren't organic. Here's where to buy it and how to spot it. - Author: Luke Nicholas - Tags: beef, where to buy, certification, supermarkets, meat There is certified organic beef at the supermarket. I walked past it for years. Not because it's hidden. Because the brand selling it also sells five kinds of beef that aren't organic, under the same name, in the same chiller, in near-identical packaging. Here's where to buy it, and how to tell. ### At the supermarket Look for [Harmony](https://www.harmony.co.nz/?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz), and then look for the word Organic on the pack. Both chains carry it, but not equally. Woolworths lists six organic lines: [rump](https://www.woolworths.co.nz/shop/productdetails?stockcode=24475&ref=organicfoodtogether.nz), [eye fillet](https://www.woolworths.co.nz/shop/productdetails?stockcode=24457&ref=organicfoodtogether.nz), [sirloin porterhouse](https://www.woolworths.co.nz/shop/productdetails?stockcode=24414&ref=organicfoodtogether.nz), [scotch fillet](https://www.woolworths.co.nz/shop/productdetails?stockcode=24464&ref=organicfoodtogether.nz), [schnitzel](https://www.woolworths.co.nz/shop/productdetails?stockcode=24479&ref=organicfoodtogether.nz) and [mince](https://www.woolworths.co.nz/shop/productdetails?stockcode=24418&ref=organicfoodtogether.nz). At [New World](https://www.newworld.co.nz/shop/product/5242835%5Fea%5F000nw?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz) and [Pak'nSave](https://www.paknsave.co.nz/shop/product/5242835%5Fea%5F000pns?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz) I can find two: the organic premium mince and the [organic beef tallow](https://www.paknsave.co.nz/shop/product/5330936%5Fea%5F000pns?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz). So: mince at either chain, steak cuts at Woolworths. And check your own store rather than trusting the website, because the Pak'nSave mince page says plainly that it is not stocked at Whangarei. Now the catch, and it is the whole reason this article exists. Harmony also sells beef that is not organic, under the same name, in the same cabinet. Woolworths lists Harmony NZ Taupo Beef Sirloin Steak Porterhouse Grass Fed. It also lists Harmony NZ Organic Beef Sirloin Steak Porterhouse Grass Fed. Fourteen words each, one word different. Pak'nSave has Harmony Classic Beef Sausages and Harmony Beef Burgers, both good meat, neither certified organic. [Harmony's farmer page](https://www.harmony.co.nz/our-farmers?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz) lays out the full stable: Taupo Beef, Coastal Lamb, Speckle Beef, Lake Ohau, Highgrounds and New Zealand Organic Meats. Only the last one is the organic line. The brand name tells you nothing on its own. The word Organic on the front of the pack is the whole signal. [Harris Farms](https://harrisfarms.nz/?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz), out of Cheviot in North Canterbury, does the same thing: a certified organic line inside a mostly conventional range. Their organic cuts are diced, fillet, mince, ribeye, rump and sirloin, and [their stockists](https://harrisfarms.nz/stockists?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz) are Pak'nSave, New World, Four Square, FreshChoice, On The Spot and Raeward Fresh. Two brands. Same rule for both. Read the pack, not the logo. The same trap runs through the supermarket organic ranges generally, which is what I found when I [went looking at Macro](https://www.organicfoodtogether.nz/macro-the-organic-brand-that-became-a-supermarket-strategy/). ### At a butcher or organic grocer [Naturally Organic](https://naturallyorganic.co.nz/?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz) stocks The Organic Farm Butchery's beef and lamb at both stores, Northridge in Albany and Glen Innes. [Beckenham Butchery](https://beckenhambutchery.co.nz/?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz) in Christchurch is the clearest example of how a good shop assembles this. [Their about page](https://beckenhambutchery.co.nz/pages/about-us?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz) names all three suppliers: organic beef from Harris Farms, organic lamb from New Zealand Organic Meats, organic chicken from Bostock Brothers. Three suppliers, one counter, all of it labelled. Greytown Butchery in the Wairarapa carries The Organic Farm's meat. Whakatāne Organics in the Bay of Plenty may be the best-stocked organic meat counter in the country for its size. Waima Hill, Black Pond Farm and The Organic Farm Butchery, all three in one shop, in a town of sixteen thousand people. Beyond the butchers, [The Organic Farm](https://theorganicfarm.co.nz/?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz) has the widest shop footprint in the country, and [its stockist list](https://theorganicfarm.co.nz/pages/stockists?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz) is the most useful page I found writing this. [Farro](https://farro.co.nz/?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz) carries it in seven Auckland stores. [Commonsense](https://commonsenseorganics.co.nz/?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz) carries it in five: Mt Eden in Auckland, plus Kapiti, Lower Hutt, Wellington City and Kilbirnie. [Moore Wilson's](https://moorewilsons.co.nz/?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz) in Wellington has it. So do around thirty independents, from Bells Produce in Kaitaia and Kakariki in Mangawhai down through Whole Heart and Organic Nation in Hamilton, Gourmet Trader in Tauranga, Brown Owl in Rotorua, Cornucopia and the three Bellatino's in Hawke's Bay, Down To Earth in New Plymouth and Organic Buzz in Palmerston North. If you're in the South Island, plan differently. That whole network is ten shops: three in Nelson, plus Motueka, Takaka, one in Christchurch, Geraldine, Queenstown, Wanaka and Roxburgh. Nothing in Dunedin or Invercargill. South of about Geraldine this becomes a courier proposition rather than a shopping one. Except for one. [Taste Nature](https://www.tastenature.co.nz/?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz) in Dunedin is the organic shop in the lower South Island, and its meat counter carries beef from [Deep Creek Deli](https://deepcreekdeli.co.nz/?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz), a family butchery in North East Valley trading since 2011\. Different supply chain, same result. Deep Creek is a good example of reading the range rather than the shop. Their online store runs a category called Beef, Organic Prime Steer, with organic eye fillet, topside, short ribs and steak mince in it. Alongside it sits a separate conventional line, free range grass fed Angus from Canterbury farms, with no organic claim attached. Same butcher, same counter, two different products. The Otago Farmers Market vendor profile says their certified organic beef comes from West Otago, which points at a farm further down this page. For shops near you generally, there's [the Places guide](https://www.organicfoodtogether.nz/places/), which is growing region by region. One thing worth knowing: a shop does not need its own organic certificate to sell you a sealed pack of certified organic beef. [BioGro's own rules](https://www.biogro.co.nz/non-primary-retail?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz) put the requirement where product is processed, packed or stored, not where it's sold, and retailer verification is a voluntary badge on top. So don't read anything into a grocer not appearing on a register if the pack they hand you is certified. Where it does matter is at a butcher's counter, when someone cuts a carcass to order. That step needs a certificate of its own, held by whoever does the cutting. I went through [what that actually means at The Organic Farm Butchery](https://www.organicfoodtogether.nz/the-organic-farm-butchery-what-it-actually-is/) earlier this year. ### Delivered to your door This is where the real choice is, and most of it ships nationwide. [The Organic Food Shop](https://theorganicfoodshop.nz/?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz) sells beef and lamb from [Pikiroa Organic Farm](https://www.pikiroaorganicfarm.co.nz/?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz) in the Owairaka Valley, forty minutes south of Hamilton. Russell Bayley is the fourth generation on that farm and converted it to organic in 1998\. Beef dry aged 21 days, plus lamb, eggs, honey and seasonal veg, shipped weekly. [Meat With Us](https://www.meatwithus.co.nz/?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz) is Hukarere Station in West Otago, twenty thousand acres on the Pomahaka River, farmed by Rebecca and Quintin Hazlett. Certified organic since 2008\. Eighteen thousand of those acres are hill country running from 250 to 1200 metres, which is breeding country rather than finishing country, and they stopped winter cropping in 2019 in favour of dense short-duration grazing on the Allan Savory model. Their certified organic ribeye took a gold medal at the 2024 Outstanding Food Producer Awards. Beef and lamb boxes, delivered nationwide. This is also almost certainly the farm behind the organic beef at Taste Nature, though neither business says so publicly, so treat that as the obvious inference rather than a confirmed fact. [Hunter Hills](https://www.hunterhills.co.nz/organic-meat-boxes/?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz), near Timaru, sells organic Angus beef and lamb in roughly 10kg boxes, couriered frozen. The Henderson family have been on that farm since 1924 and BioGro certified for more than twenty-five years. If you want no ambiguity, start here. [Juniper Hill Farm](https://www.juniperhill.co.nz/?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz) in Hawke's Bay's Raukawa Valley is the most self-contained operation in the country. Pure Angus, bred, raised and processed on the same property through their own on-farm micro abattoir and butchery, dry aged on the bone. They hold a certificate covering slaughter and packing as well as farming, which almost nobody else does. [Their ordering works differently](https://www.juniperhill.co.nz/order-info/?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz): a deposit up front, then the balance invoiced on exact weight. [Waima Hill](https://organicbeef.co.nz/?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz) is Ursula and Erwin Eisenmann, farming at the foot of the Waima Ranges near Kaikohe since 1993\. They took transitional Demeter certification in 1995, full Demeter in 1997, and added full BioGro certification in 2020\. Biodynamic and organic, both certified, which is rare here. Mail order, the Whangārei Growers Market on Saturday mornings, and a handful of North Island shops. Online ordering closes when there is no surplus, so check before you plan around it. There is more on them in the next section, because they are also the clearest example of the thing that section is about. [Black Pond Farm](https://www.blackpond.farm/?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz) at Mangatangi in the north Waikato is 106 hectares under BioGro certificate 6033, farmed by Hamish Browne and Robyn Budd. Thirty of those hectares are QEII covenanted bush. The cattle move daily across a pasture mix of fifteen to twenty species, on a rule of eat a third, trample a third, leave a third, with forty-five to sixty days between grazings. Full range of cuts, shipped frozen nationwide. [The Organic Farm](https://theorganicfarm.co.nz/?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz) in Hawke's Bay is the butcher model, sourcing from [a group of certified organic farms](https://theorganicfarm.co.nz/pages/our-farms?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz) and selling online and through those shops above. Some names I have left out on purpose. Several operations sell what they describe as organic beef online, and when I went to check them the websites were down, the social accounts had gone quiet, or I could not find them on either certification register under any search term I tried. Any one of those on its own means nothing. Together they mean I cannot tell you the business is trading, let alone that the beef is certified. When that changes I will add them, and if you run one of them, get in touch and I will look again. ### The boxes that can't say organic There's a category the label rules make invisible, and it's worth knowing about before you decide the word is the only thing that matters. I thought Hickory Bay was the odd one out when I wrote about it. It isn't. Once you start reading the fine print, this turns up again and again. [Hickory Bay Farm](https://www.hickorybay.co.nz/?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz) on Banks Peninsula is a BioGro certified organic farm. Its beef boxes do not say organic. Not because anything is wrong, but because the certificate has to follow every hand that touches the meat, and the cutting and packing step in their chain isn't certified. So they sell what they can prove, grass-fed, single farm, named paddocks, and leave the word where the certificate actually lives, on the farm gate. I wrote [the whole story of that farm](https://www.organicfoodtogether.nz/the-rothschild-the-surfer-and-the-beef-box/) in June, and it is a better one than the label suggests. Waima Hill sits in the same place, and says so on its own website. They have not certified the butchery, because the cost and the logistics did not stack up. Only their own animals go through it, every one traceable by NAIT tag, and they take care to keep the meat to organic and biodynamic standard through processing, but that step carries no certificate and they tell you that on the page rather than leaving you to find out. The Organic Farm has the same gap for a different reason. Their nearest abattoir is not certified organic and, as they told Commonsense Organics in 2023, will not certify, because they are too small to be worth the trouble. The alternative is trucking live animals a long way to a plant that is certified. They chose the shorter journey for the animal over the word on the packet. Three farms, three versions of the same wall. It is not a coincidence and it is not carelessness. There are almost no certified organic places in this country to have an animal killed and cut, which is the point I come back to further down. What it means practically: certified organic on a New Zealand meat product usually describes the paddock, not the whole trip. Juniper Hill, further up this page, is one of the few that covers the lot, and you can see why it is unusual once you know what it costs everyone else. If you want beef raised to organic standards and you understand why the box is silent about it, this is a good place to buy. If you specifically want the certified claim, it isn't. Both are reasonable positions. The point is that you now know which one you're taking. ### Buying a whole beast You can buy a quarter, a half or a whole animal direct and fill a freezer. It's the cheapest beef you'll ever eat per kilo, it takes three to eight weeks, and it's a different exercise from the shopping above. [Out the Farm Gate](https://outthefarmgate.co.nz/?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz) is the tidiest of the marketplaces, matching you to a farmer and coordinating the butcher. I went through [what its farm tier ratings actually measure](https://www.organicfoodtogether.nz/regenerative-beef-isnt-organic-beef/) in a separate piece, and the short version bears repeating: [the tier](https://outthefarmgate.co.nz/farm-rating/?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz) tells you about soil and grazing, not about what went into the animal. Look past the leaf for the word Organic and a named certifier. The other thing to know is that if the animal goes the homekill route, the meat cannot legally be sold and cannot be labelled organic, no matter how the farm is certified. Ask which abattoir is being used before you commit. [MPI's rules](https://www.mpi.govt.nz/food-safety-home/food-safety-tips-fishing-hunting-homekill/homekill?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz) are clear enough on this: it is illegal to sell or trade homekill meat, and buying an animal and having it slaughtered straight away has its own name, select and slaughter, and its own prohibition. That may change. MPI has [a consultation open until 5 October 2026](https://www.mpi.govt.nz/food-safety-home/food-safety-tips-fishing-hunting-homekill/homekill?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz) on whether the 28-day rule stays, shrinks or goes, and on whether homekill meat should carry a label saying it has not been through the same checks. Here is what that looks like on an actual farm. [Shelly Beach Organics](https://outthefarmgate.co.nz/farmer/shelly-beach-organics/?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz) sits on Shelly Beach Road at South Head, on the Kaipara. Dan and Kazuyo Friedlander have farmed it for more than three decades, on land that has been worked biodynamically since it was set up as Shelly Beach Farm in 1978\. Chemical free from the start. Long rotations. The herd grazes from the top paddocks down to the tideline. They also do not run cattle. They run Mediterranean water buffalo, a heritage breed brought here in the 1990s, grown out over three to four years, never grain finished. Buffalo is leaner than beef and stronger in flavour, and you cannot buy it by the pack. You buy a quarter, a half or a whole animal, cut to your sheet, hung a fortnight, vacuum sealed and collected. A quarter is roughly a 55 to 70kg carcass yielding somewhere between 33 and 46kg of actual cuts. Now count the reasons this cannot say organic. The cutting is done by a homekill operator, which puts it squarely inside the rules I have just described. I could not find the farm on either certification register, and nothing on their own material names a certifier, so as far as the paperwork is concerned the word does not apply no matter how long they have been farming that way. And it is not beef, so it would not sit in a beef category anyway. Thirty years of biodynamic practice on the same piece of land, and not one part of the label rules has anything to say about it. I keep meeting farms in this position. It is becoming the most interesting thing I have found writing this. ### What you're actually buying Here's something no label tells you, and it changed how I read a pack of organic mince. A meaningful number of the farms certified to produce organic beef here describe their product, on their own certificates, as cull cows. Not beef cattle. Dairy cows at the end of their working lives. I have no way to turn that into a percentage of what actually reaches a shelf, and I am not going to pretend otherwise, but it is not a handful of farms and it is written in their own words. There is nothing wrong with this. Those animals have had a better life than almost anything in a feedlot, and cull cow makes excellent mince and manufacturing beef. But it means some of the organic beef supply and the organic dairy herd are the same animals at different ages, and nothing on the pack distinguishes an animal raised for beef from one that spent eight years being milked. Both are legitimately organic. They are not the same product. ### Why there's so little of it About 112 farms in New Zealand hold organic certification covering cattle. Between them and your chiller sit five companies certified to turn a certified organic animal into meat you can buy. Five is the number I could find, and I say that carefully, because every time I searched the registers using a different word another operator appeared who had been there all along. If you hold a certificate to process organic meat and you are not in this list, tell me and I will add you. Even allowing for that, it is a very small number, and it is the reason organic beef is a small shelf rather than a big one. Not demand, not price, not certification at the shop door. There is almost nowhere to have the animal killed and cut with the certificate intact. It's the same wall I hit [looking for organic lamb](https://www.organicfoodtogether.nz/new-zealand-sells-the-world-its-lamb-try-buying-an-organic-one-here/) in June, and I've written up how that chain works and who's in it separately, because it's a longer story than a shopping list. ### How to check any claim yourself Two public registers, both free, both faster than asking anyone. Look up the farm on [BioGro's licensee list for meat, milk and eggs](https://www.biogro.co.nz/licenseeprofiles/milk-meat-and-eggs?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz) or [AsureQuality's Find Organic Products page](https://www.asurequality.com/services/auditing-and-certification/asurequality-organic-certification/find-organic-products-2/?ref=organicfoodtogether.nz). Then look up whoever cut the meat. If the farm is there and the butchery isn't, what you have is organically raised beef that isn't certified organic, and the label has to say so. One warning from doing this myself: search more than one word. Farms describe cattle as beef, cattle, calves, cull cows and half a dozen other things, and searching for the obvious term will miss a third of them. That distinction is doing a lot of quiet work in this country. ### This is what I have found so far I want to be straight about what this is. It is where I have got to, not the finished picture. I built it from two public registers, from the websites of every operator I could find, and from standing in front of a few chillers. Every time I searched with a different word, another farm or another company turned up that had been there the whole time. The count went up four times while I was writing. It will go up again. So there will be farms, butchers, shops and online sellers I have missed. Not because they are hiding, but because there is no single list of this in New Zealand and I have had to build one out of scraps. If you sell certified organic beef and you are not here, or you know somewhere that should be, [tell me](mailto:hello@organicfoodtogether.nz) and I will check it and add it. Same if something here is wrong, out of date, or has closed since I wrote it. I will keep looking either way, and I will say what changed when I update it. --- **Before you go** If this was useful, [sign up free](https://www.organicfoodtogether.nz/#/portal/signup) and I'll send the next one. If you want to chip in, [there's a tip jar](https://www.organicfoodtogether.nz/#/portal/support).