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GOLD FOR COUNTRY QUEENSLAND 

Mr Ray Villian, proprietor of   Walkerston Country Meats on the outskirts of Mackay Central Queensland has been crowned the 2008 "Sausage King" for the Traditional Meat Sausage.

Mr Villian won the Australian competition held at the Darling harbour Sydney on the 1^st of March. The competition is run by the Australian Meat Industry Council and is the Gold medal award for the meat industry.  The Sausages are judged on appearance, texture, and aroma and finally cooked by chefs and taste tested. Walkerston Country Meats uses quality Bazadais -Brahman cross meat for its extremely good taste, tenderness and texture and the correct meat to fat ratio.  The other secrets are the mincing process and the timing of all the ingredients combined with correct amount of moisture. The staff all has an input into the different recipes and every other week there is a new combination being trialed which has led to the many varieties of mouth watering sausages and pepperonis made by the butcher shop. Ray said that he and his staff are over the moon with the win and it is also a great win for country Queensland and demonstrates that country butchers are right up there and you can't get any better than first. 

This follows on from Rays wins in the Queensland competition 2007 where he was crowned "Queensland Sausage King" for traditional meat sausage.  Ray also received high recognition by being the first entrant in any sausage competition to have taken out three first places in the regional state competition held earlier in 2007.

John and Kathy McFarlane of the "Greenmount Bazadais" cattle stud also at Walkerston congratulated Walkerston Country Meats and their staff on their latest achievement. "This was an outstanding result and backs up the last seven years that "Greenmount Bazadais" and Walkerston Country Meats have worked closely together doing many and varied trials which has now proven to be highly successful" Mr McFarlane said.

The Bazadais-Brahman (Bazaman) cattle used by Mr Villian for the competition were supplied locally by John and Kathy McFarlane.

Walkerston Country Meats can now add this latest achievement to some of its other firsts such as being the first Butchers shop out of France to have Bazadais cross gourmet meat over the counter 6 days a week having processed about 1,000 head to date. They were also granted the Heart Foundations heart tick in March last year and this would have to be one of the firsts for a regional butcher.

Ray said that the lean Bazadais beef has shown his customers that the old strongly held belief that you had to have a high fat cover and marbling to get tender meat, may have been correct one time. "Not anymore, the Bazadais meat is the leanest and yet the tenderest meat that I have ever used in my 29 years in the butchering game" Mr Villian Said.