Meat Donations
Background to donating harvested wild meat
Donating wild meat is a generous and impactful way to support neighbours and others in your community. Our members of the Southern Lakes NZDA Branch have often donated excess harvested meat to friends and family, but for some time now, have wanted a way to donate meat to those in need across the Queenstown region.
Most people think of harvested wild meat as venison, but our members also harvest goat, as well as chamois & tahr, so we needed a safe and easy way to donate all harvested and nutritious meat, ensuring traceability and accountability too.
Those in need and receiving food parcels often have limited cooking facilities, and so smaller packs of mince in 500g packs tends to be the preferred option. To process mince takes time when done by an individual and a butcher involves costs.
So in 2024/25, a group of passionate volunteers worked together with a number of partners to bring the vision to reality
Identified Needs for the Meat Donation Program:
A method to record and donate meat
A way to distribute it to eligible community members
More funding to pay for the mincing and packaging costs
Recording and Donating Meat
Game Animal Council (GAC) Partnership
The Game Animal Council (GAC) created a training platform for hunters called better hunting, so using that same software, they created a training module and a method for recording all meat that is harvested and donated.
If you're donating , use of this platform is required. It provides a quick knowledge check and an easy way to log your donation, ensuring traceability and accountability.
By recording your meat from bush to table, we help maintain high standards of safety and transparency in unregulated game meat donations.
Distributing the Meat to the community
Kiwi Harvest Partnership
Kiwi Harvest - supports an average of 825 people a week through the different food programs run by our charity partners across Queenstown, Wanaka and Cromwell. They receive almost no meat from supermarkets to pass on to the charities. Therefore venison mince is the only source of animal protein likely to be able to offer charity partners in any quantity or consistency into the long term.
Kiwi Harvest provide a cold storage facility for hunters to donate their harvested and part butchered meat. From here it gets taken to a butcher in batches where it is minced and labelled, and then distributed to the community
Who do Kiwi Harvest work with? (charities/agencies):
Queenstown
1. Baskets of Blessings
2. Te Whare Hauora Ki Tahuna
3. Happiness House
4. Salvation Army Queenstown
5. Queenstown Playcentre
6. Wakatipu Youth Trust
7. Central Lakes Family Trust
8. Abbeyfield Retirement Village
9. Plunket Queenstown
Wanaka
1. Community Networks Wanaka
2. Food For Love
3. Kahu Youth Trust
Cromwell
1. Cromwell Foodbank
2. Cromwell Youth Trust
Funding
Initially the project was funded by the local branch membership to provide harvested meat to Kiwi Harvest on a small scale and test the process.
Queenstown Airport Community Funding
In May 2025 we received a $5000 grant from the Queenstown Airport Community Fund to get the project off the ground with more capacity.
We continue to raise funds with donations and funding grants to continue and support the initiative
Queenstown Lakes District Council
We received $5000 funding from the local council (QLDC) - these operational costs* help our members get out there and harvest the meat
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