‘Everyone seemed to love it’
New World Beef offers variety of wagyu, classic beef cuts
One-of-a-kind homegrown wagyu and classic beef is being grown right here in the backyard of the west coast of Newfoundland.
New World Beef, located in Saint David’s, between Stephenville and Codroy Valley, is an offshoot of New World Dairy, a dairy farm that has been in operation for more than 50 years and across three generations of the Chaffey family.
The addition of the beef farm was a contribution made by Kira Chaffey, the daughter of current owner Brent Chaffey.
She is pleased to make this addition to the family farm.
“It’s nice to be able to put your name on something that you’ve thought of and created and you can see it start to finish,” she told West Coast Wire.
Furthermore, it’s satisfying for her to be involved in the process, seeing how everything is done herself, ensuring the cows are properly raised and cared for, and to contribute to Newfoundland and Labrador’s food security.
“I like the idea of being able to know how everything is being raised,” she said. “People are paying more attention to what’s going into what they’re eating, how it’s raised and how it’s been cared for. And Newfoundland, specifically, has been promoting a more sustainable food chain, trying to promote people to buy local products raised here, from meat products to vegetable products to you-name-it, whatever is out there to grow and raise and do ourselves.”
The dairy farm was started by Kira’s grandfather Wilson Chaffey in 1969. He had been working in the logging industry, but Kira says, for reasons unknown, one day he decided he should start milking cows.
The farm grew over the years and his son Brent took over around 1990 and continues to operate it. It has continued to grow and, today, they have a herd of about 2,000 dairy cows, produce about 12 million litres of milk per year, and have 3,000 acres of land, where they grow corn, grass and wheat for the cows to forage.
However, a few years ago, Kira, who has been working on the farm most of her life, became interested in expanding beyond dairy and into beef production.
The family had been raising a small number of beef cows just for themselves and eventually friends became interested and they started keeping more cows. Kira became increasingly interested in what other breeds were out there and soon learned about wagyu cows.
“We tried that and everyone seemed to love it,” she recalled.
She decided it would be a good idea to raise a few and sell wagyu and, in 2018, they acquired their first wagyu calves.
According to Kira, what’s different about the wagyu beef is it’s more marbled than the classic beef, has a lower melting point and is juicier.
However, the wagyu are slower to mature, taking at least 24 months before they are ready to butcher, and are, thus, a little more costly than most cows.
Therefore, they decided to look at supplementing the wagyu line with a classic beef line.
Today, they offer both a premium wagyu beef line and a classic beef line, in a variety of cuts.
They also sell to restaurants and a few stores around the province, as far away as St. John’s or St. Anthony.
About 40 employees work on the farm, looking after the dairy cows as well as the beef cows.
All the animals are born, bred and raised on the farm, and are housed in the five barns they operate.
New World Beef currently prepares about 12 classic beef cows per month and about two to four wagyu, but Kira said that varies depending on the season, increasing particularly in the summer when people are barbecuing more often and more tourists are around.
Orders for steaks, roasts, beef boxes, a wide variety of other cuts, including ground beef, burger patties, short ribs and more can be placed at newworldbeef.ca or by calling 709-649-1011
They deliver weekly to Corner Brook, Stephenville and Port aux Basques, and biweekly to the Northern Peninsula and St. John’s.
New World Beef also accepts special requests for cuts they don’t normally carry.
“People are paying more attention to what’s going into what they’re eating, how it’s raised and how it’s been cared for.” Kira Chaffey
New World Beef