Riki Kerekere: Sharp Blacks Captain on our best butchers representing New Zealand in the World Butchers Challenge

The country's top butchers are jetting off to Paris to represent New Zealand on the world stage. 

Our national team, the Sharp Blacks, will compete with the best in the trade around the world in the annual World Butchers Challenge. 

They'll be judged on things like their cuts, amount of meat wasted, and yield. 

Sharp Blacks Captain Riki Kerekere told Mike Hosking the Kiwi team are held in high esteem. 

He says the team loves to showcase the great quality of Kiwi butchery. 

LISTEN ABOVE 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Sharp Blacks chasing the World Cup in Paris, Ada, Babez
Butcher is going to be testing their skill sets against
thirteen other countries. In twenty twenty two, we got Bronze
Sharp Blacks captain Ricky Kittikitty is what this rookie morning
to you?

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Oh modern I might.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Is this thing getting bigger each year in terms of
participation and interest?

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Yeah, absolutely become a global event. I think they've got
a couple of new countries that are coming from the Asia. Yeah,
it's just gets big every year and looking forward to
getting there good.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
We've got a team of eight. How do they get selected?
What are they? What are they looking for?

Speaker 2 (00:37):
So we have it's actually more than We also have
young butchers and young apprentices competing and we have a
team the Sharplick team, which is six. We also have
a reserve, so that's seven. But basically the young butchers
and apprentices are competing in their own event against the
best young butchers and apprentices in the country. They are
selected through our competition in our local competition. If you

(00:59):
win there go on to the final and when that
that's part of the prize, which is a great prize.
Get to travel around the world and compete against the
best with the team a bit different. So this team
that we had is the same team we head back
in Sacramento when we did the selection process, we went
through the opened up to whoever wants to apply and

(01:20):
went through the process with the panel, and pretty much
the same team came back, was selected and performing in Paris.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Brilliant. You've got any sense of where you're at when
it comes to the competition.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
I continue, we're as far as where we stand on
a global stage. Very good in past competitions because there
had been Sharp Lecks before us as well, pretty much
always on the podium, had first seconds. Obviously Sacramento we
got the bronze. But yeah, very good. We're held in
high esteem. And yeah, we got some great skillful butchers

(01:57):
in our country and we love to showcase it around.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Fantastic. Go well, hope you win. Ricky Kitticuta, here's the
Sharp Blacks captain with us this morning. For more from
the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to News Talks at
b from six am weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.