David Blackmore abandons fight to continue wagyu operation
David Blackmore has abandoned his fight to keep farming his wagyu cattle in the upper Goulburn Valley.
Australia’s most acclaimed beef producer, David Blackmore, has abandoned his fight to keep farming his world-famous herd of wagyu cattle in the upper Goulburn Valley.
Mr Blackmore yesterday declared he had had enough and withdrew his application before Victoria’s Planning Minister for his Alexandra pastures to be zoned for intensive animal production.
The move, forced on the former livestock producer of the year after more than two years tied up in red and green tape, council bureaucracy and bitter battles with complaining locals and neighbours, will see his prized herd of Blackmore wagyu cattle shifted interstate.
An exhausted and dispirited Mr Blackmore, whose sought-after beef sells for $200 a steak in the top fine-dining restaurants of Australia, New York and China, plans to quit wagyu farming and hand over management of his relocated wagyu operations to son Ben and daughter Danielle.
“I’m done with it; there won’t be any more Blackmore full-blood wagyu produced here in central Victoria for much longer,” a saddened Mr Blackmore said.
“They won and I’ve given up, in a sense. We’re having to relocate all our herd, which is not what I wanted at all.”
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Mr Blackmore, 65, told The Weekend Australian yesterday he could no longer farm as he wanted on his irrigated Goulburn River land, since newly arrived neighbours first complained to the local Murrindindi Shire Council in 2013 about noise, truck movements and birds on his farm.
The council later ruled the Blackmores needed an intensive farming permit under state planning laws to rear 1400 young wagyu cattle on the property; a permit it later refused to issue.
Top Australian chef Neil Perry, who uses only Blackmore wagyu at his Rockpool restaurants, said the demise of Mr Blackmore’s wagyu farm at Alexandra was a national tragedy.
“I just think it is incredibly sad that bureaucracy and a couple of ratbag neighbours have driven the world’s best-practice wagyu farming out of the area,” Mr Perry lamented.