Celebrating its 25th anniversary, and a major new national media campaign, Cleaver’s Organic has been awarded a number of substantial industry accolades, including Silver at the Sydney Royal Fine Food Show, and supplier recognition at the 2023 Meat Standards Australia (MSA) Excellence awards.
“This is a truly outstanding result for Cleaver’s Organic,” says Hewitt Livestock & Ambassador Livestock Director Peter Gall (Cleaver’s parent company). “The quality of our certified organic grass fed beef can’t be overstated. To deliver such quality produce is a process years in the making.”
At the Sydney Royal Fine Food Show, Cleaver’s Certified Organic Grass Fed and Free Range Beef won Silver in its category, a notable accomplishment given it was Cleaver’s first foray into the competition.
The MSA Excellence awards recognised suppliers to the Cleaver’s Organic brand as consistently delivering beef of superior eating quality, based on compliance rates and index performance under the MSA program. The results were based on more than 1.7 million taste tests judging tenderness, juiciness, flavour and overall liking by more than 250,000 consumers.(1)
In this year’s MSA Excellence awards, Cleaver’s Organic suppliers made up 12 of the top 16 large category suppliers, achieving 96% compliance rate to MSA grading, with 91% of their cattle achieving over 52+ MSA Index score. Cleaver’s Organic suppliers consistently rate in the top 10 for MSA results.
“To achieve such a strong result in a grading outcome-based assessment with this scale is an amazing achievement. It really shows what we’ve always known – that grass fed and finished high claims Australian raised organic beef is top eating quality,” says Hewitt General Manager Livestock Ben Bateup.
Over the past 25 years, the Cleaver’s business has been guided by a simple philosophy: Treat animals well, treat people well, and treat the land well. The company’s ethical pillars are:
- Certified organic – Cleaver’s is proudly Certified Organic and raised in Australia. Cleaver’s products are free of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), antibiotics, added hormones, synthetic chemicals and artificial preservatives, colours, and flavours. Their beef and lamb is grass fed on Australian pastures, with free-range chicken eating organic grain.
- High animal welfare – All Cleaver’s animals are certified organic by Australian Certified Organic (ACO) living, and interacting as they would in nature. Cleaver’s beef and lamb is also certified by the Global Animal Partnership (GAP), the world’s highest independent animal welfare standard.
- Carbon neutral – Cleaver’s meat products are certified carbon neutral by the Carbon Reduction Institute (CRI). Cleaver’s takes responsibility for our footprint from the properties to the shelf. We minimise our carbon footprint and offset unavoidable carbon emissions through independently verified credits.
Cleaver’s Organic products are available at Woolworths, Coles, and select independent retailers.
(1) mla.com.au/globalassets/mla-corporate/marketing-beef-and-lamb/documents/meat-standards-australia/msa18-beef-tt_using-the-msa-index-to-optimise-beef-eating-quality-lr_updated.pdf.
Mick Hewitt, Ben Hewitt, and Peter Gall.
