The UK game market could hardly be described as healthy. Supply of feathered game outweighs demand, and as Stephen Crouch of the National Game Dealers Association (NGDA) confirmed, the UK does not have the processing power to cope with the number of birds being shot.
Perhaps the single biggest problem facing gamedealers — and coincidentally the most difficult issue to solve — is the high cost of processing feathered game. Andy Gray, of MC Kelly butchers in Devon, explained further: “The equipment you use to process a pheasant is different from that you’d use for a chicken. Chickens are wet plucked whereas pheasants are dry, which almost always means someone standing beside a machine.
“Some of the bigger outfits
