Poaka Frequently Asked Questions

Are your products “Gluten Free”?
We don’t use any gluten containing ingredients in any of our products or in our facility, we take great care to ensure this is always the case. However as we don’t test our products for gluten we can not and don’t claim they are “gluten free“. Our pork mince is 100% pork with no additives or additional ingredients at all.

Where do you get your pork from?
Poaka has it own 100 acre free range pig farm located near Aylesbury, which is approx 35 km west of Christchurch, New Zealand. Thats right we breed and farm our own free range, wild farmed, pasture raised, heritage breed pigs right here in New Zealand! This beautiful pork is used in 100% of our products, we do not source meat from anywhere else. 

Who makes Poaka's products?
We do! Thats right, Poaka has its own MPI approved craft butchery, where we produce our own New Zealand farmed, free range, pasture raised pork into our range of traditionally made products. Food safety is of the highest importance to Poaka. We are independently audited and verified on a regular basis and, carry out a comprehensive product testing regime to ensure all our products exceed the highest food safety and quality standards.   All of our products are made in small batches to ensure maximum product quality, using traditional techniques that take time, all adding to the exceptional product flavour. We dry cure our bacon, we use locally sourced herbs and spices used in our products and mix all the batch recipe ingredients from scratch for maximum flavour. When you buy our products, you are buying premium quality products directly from the farmer and the producer!

Do you guarantee your products?
Yes we do! Read about our money back guarantee here. Poaka prides itself on making some of the most delicious pork products available. So we want all of our customers to be totally satisfied with their purchase from us. If for any reason your product does not arrive in perfect condition or you are unhappy with your purchase, please contact us and we will happily make this right. We will either send you a replacement product or fully refund you, whichever you prefer. 

What does “Paddock to Plate” mean?
Poaka is a true “Paddock to Plate” producer. This means:

We farm 100% of the pork we use in our products.
We slaughter our own animals on farm in our own MPI approved Micro Abattoir. 
We craft this outstanding pork ourselves into a range of delicious products in our own MPI approved facility. 
We sell direct to you the customer.
Simply, we do the whole process  from raising the pigs, to handing over award winning products to you, the customer. Poaka did it all. With care and love and the highest animal welfare. 

Wild Farmed ,Pasture Raised vs Free Range vs Free Farmed vs Shed Farmed. What’s the difference?
One of the reasons we’ve put together the information below is that most consumers think that “free range” and “free farmed” are interchangeable terms meaning pretty much the same thing. They are not.  Genetic “improvement” has resulted in breeds like the Large White and Landrace that can grow extremely fast. These breeds have been selected to optimise feed conversion and grow faster, leaner, and therefore more efficiently. They grow so fast, that they can’t easily sustain themselves with lower energy input systems, like pasture based foraging, making up a significant part of their diets.

At the bottom of the chain are the “indoor intensive/shed” type systems. The pigs are raised in indoor confined areas from the time they are born. 
“Free Farmed” is really a marketing term created by marketers who wanted to differentiate pigs they grow in confined areas from “intensive indoor” pigs.  They are “free” to move around a larger barns or sheds and socialise with other pigs. There is nothing very “free” about this process, but it is the term that has been accepted as meaning non-indoor intensive. The preferred genetics for indoor pig farming are generally “white” pigs. These will be either “large white” or “landrace” breeds that do much better in confinement situations.
A key difference between “free farmed” and “free range” pigs is their diets and the amount of exercise the pig gets. Pigs grown indoors in confined areas are fed exclusively on a manufactured diet of cereals, very high in proteins, and other additives. The meat and fat produced is uniform and the food is designed to maximise their growth and create predictable and consistent carcasses with a predictable fat to muscle ratio.
Conventional Pig farms work under the same economic pressures that result from globalisation of the food chain as other producers. It is this type of industrial animal agriculture that is required to deliver a product that can compete with the avalanche of cheap imported pork that is brought into NZ from the EU and elsewhere. The result is a commoditized meat product. One that is very different from the meat of a heritage breed pig, raised outdoors in a low stock density environment, where foraging is available.
Then we get to “free range” pigs. Most people think that “free range” is the best way to raise a pig. And in most ways they are right. A pig raised outdoors is able to exercise more of its natural behaviours. But what does “free range” really mean?
At one end of the “free range” the pigs are “free” to range about a paddock. They have much more space, and on a good day can enjoy being outside. But the reality of most “free range” pig farms is that because the stock numbers required to be economically competitive with “free farmed” and imported intensively raised indoor pigs are higher than a paddock can sustainably support. These free ranged pigs are feed the same high protein, cereal based diet and this makes up the majority of the pigs diet. 
Then there is Poaka "Wild farmed" and “Pasture Raised Pigs”. This is how Poaka farms its pigs, and it plays a major part in delivering a whole different flavour profile in our meat.
To keep pastures looking like the they do at Poaka Farms below results from a number of choices:
We operate a business model that is based on relatively low stock units per hectare. At these low stock numbers, the pasture can keep up with the pigs browsing.
We utilise a blend of “hard to root” grasses, herbs, and legume’s that are more resistant to our pigs browsing and recover faster.
The pigs benefits from low stress browsing in a mixed feed environment, they can forage at will and choose what to eat, similar to what would happen in the wild.

Most of the producers of highest quality food and wine agree that, “…flavour takes time…” and it is no different with Poaka’s heritage breed pigs. Our pigs average age when sent to the abattoir is around 8 months old. For indoor raised confined pigs it is almost half that time.

I buy “Free Farmed” pork, it’s the same as “Free Range” pork isn’t it?
No! “Free Farmed” pork and “Free Range” pork are totally different! The major difference is in the way they are farmed. 

Free range pigs are born outside with their mother. When they are weaned, they are put into large paddocks, the growing pigs have a vast amount of space to move around and roam and spend their whole life outside.  They are also stocked at low densities and are able to forage. This is by far the best way to farm pigs, however it is a lot more labor intensive, requires significantly more farm land for the pigs, the pigs grow slower as they are roaming around burning energy, and they eat more food. This all costs money. Which is why in New Zealand less than 1% of all pigs raised here are farmed this way and can be called true free range.   

Free farmed pigs are generally born outside in paddocks with their mother.  However as soon as they are old enough (generally 4 weeks old) they are weaned from their mother, and they are then placed in large sheds or barns with hundreds, if not thousands of other young pigs. They spend the rest of their life in these sheds/barns, where they eat, sleep and move around, all under the one roof. This is a very intensive system and much more cost effective than farming pigs free range. 

Poaka’s pigs are all farmed totally free range. However we take free range pig farming to the next level, by providing our pigs with large paddocks with lush pasture to forage on (they eat a huge amount of grass and pasture herbs) and having very low stock densities. We also supplementary feed our pigs an all natural blend of food we make on the farm ourselves.  This is made from all locally sourced and grown ingredients and specially formulated to develop maximum flavour in our pork.  

Heritage Breeds vs Commercial Breeds. Which is better?
As they say, there are “horses for courses”. Modern commerce has turned food into a commodity item where price and availability almost always outweigh flavour and sustainability. Between 1820 and 2002 global farming went from only needing to feed 1 billion people to needing to feed over 6.5 billion people. To achieve that, animals needed to be raised in higher and higher densities and with that came a whole range of new disease pressures. And as volumes rose, and intensification occured, prices dropped.
In order to survive in a commodity based system, producers need to modify the genetics of their animals, and their farming practices to meet the markets expectation. Pork and chicken are the best examples of taking food (animal based protein production) to the extreme. Selectively breeding animals to grow as fast as possible with the highest conversion rate of feed to muscle protein. Optimising feed systems to deliver maximum weight gain over a minimal period, for maximum profit.
At Poaka we breed, grow, and care for our animals with a completely different perspective. We farm three heritage breeds of pigs – Berkshire’s, and Saddlebacks. These pigs cannot compete with the growth rates of the commercial breeds used in modern pig farming systems. But they are perfectly suited for a life of outdoor living and foraging. They grow slower and have smaller litters of piglets. All throwbacks to a harder, outdoor life.
But, if you can farm the heritage breeds there are many benefits. Our animals stay healthier because we’re not forcing the animals to optimise every part of their life cycle, they are less stressed and have a large variety in their diet.  
So when you buy Poaka Pork, or some of our delicious cured products, you’re buying flavour that has developed over a longer time in a completely different way. You can taste it!

Do you use antibiotics in your pig feed?
Short answer, absolutely not!

In 1950, a group of United States scientists found that adding antibiotics to animal feed increases the growth rate of livestock. American Cyanamid, an American manufacturing conglomerate, published research establishing the practice.
(Source: Wikipedia)

Large scale “industrial farming” puts pressure on everything. The animals health; feeding systems; effluent systems. And growing large numbers of animals in confined spaces is a recipe for disease. Just imagine 25 – 30 people living in a typical New Zealand 3 bedroom house, and never leaving the house either! Adding antibiotics to the pigs feed is a way to suppress “challenges” or pathogens that slow the animals growth, and keeps deaths from sickness low.

At Poaka we operate a sustainable, pasture based, wild farming system. Our pigs live outside in a low pressure environment at very low stock densities. We respect the animals and how they were meant to behave and grow. And farming that way means that we have little disease pressure. We don’t use antibiotics to force animal growth, and our heritage breed pigs are inherently very healthy hardy animals. 

Does Poaka’s meat taste better?
Just like beauty is in the eye of the beholder, taste is a very personal, and subjective thing. What we can say is that Poaka supplies some of the best chefs in New Zealand and they sum up what they perceive as the biggest difference with one word – Sweet. That is an unusual word to use when describing meat, but that’s how they describe our pasture raised, slow grown, heritage breed, wild farmed pork. We like it, You be the judge. 

Do you use Nitrates in your cured meats?
The simple answer is yes, BUT about a fraction of what you find in fresh spinach or fresh lettuce! The below commonly eaten foods all contain high levels of nitrates, for example:

• Lettuce – 400ppm to 800ppm 
• Spinach – 500ppm to 2800ppm
• Kale – 300ppm to 1500ppm
• Chard – 700ppm

ppm = parts per million

(source – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5412236/ )

Food Standards allow nitrate levels in cured meats up 500 ppm (salami, dry cured meats) and 125 ppm for Bacon. 

• Poaka Bacon – less than 15ppm

Poaka cured meats have a lot less nitrate in them than your standard leafy green vegetables. Because we use traditional techniques and allow time to do its work, we can use a much lower level of nitrate, for food safety, and because of our aging process, the majority of what we put in is metabolised during the aging process, and is “used up” as the meat ages, leaving only trace levels.

How Can I contact Poaka?
Please send us a message from our contact us page and we will get back to you as soon as we can. Or you can call us on our phone number

Why do you say “True Free Range”
There are a lot of clever marketing terms crafted to lead people in believing they are buying something they are not. Free Farmed, Freedom Farmed are a couple of examples of this. Consumers are often under the impression that pigs Free Farmed or Freedom Farmed farmed are “free range” and spend their whole life running around outside in paddocks. This is not the case at all. They are finished in large barns or sheds.  Poaka only Free range farms our pigs, they spend 100% of their farmed life out in large paddocks, free to roam where they choose, forage at their leisure and socialize as they please. These are behaviours only possible in a true free range farming system. We have coined the term Wild Farmed to further differentiate the way we farm from other systems.

When will my order Ship?
We typically slaughter pigs each week on Monday and butcher the pigs on Tuesday. We then package and produce our products on Wednesday and Thursday. We aim to get as many orders out on Wednesday afternoon, the rest of the orders on Thursday. All Chilled product is sent on an overnight courier service and you will be sent tracking information. If for some unforeseen circumstance we cannot ship your order in that time frame we will contact you. If you have any questions about your order, please contact us.