A small Southland meat company is increasing its facilities to cater for a growing interest in rabbit meat for human consumption.
When Fare Game Ltd started in 2006, its focus was primarily on Fiordland venison, and owner Callum Hughes was only lukewarm on processing rabbits and hares.
However, since then, Mr Hughes said, the rabbit side of the business had grown to the point where he had purchased a new chiller truck to carry rabbits shot in Central Otago to his processing plant in Invercargill.
He also sold rabbits at the Otago Farmers' market, which could be "hit and miss".
"Sometimes you will take 20 rabbits down and they'll sell out before 7am. Sometimes you will take 20 rabbits down and you bring them all home. If you've only got two you will be able to sell 40."
Fare Game is believed to be one of only two companies in the South Island processing rabbits for human consumption.
"There's a demand there so we've got to get out and do it."
He would not say precisely how many rabbits he supplied to restaurants and wholesalers for between $14 and $22 per kilogram but mentioned shooting hundreds in a night.
Mr Hughes said he had been doing most of the shooting himself and mostly using a spotlight.
"We focus on places where we can go out and shoot some rabbits and we can pick up the odd deer while we are out there."
The farmer is paid for any deer shot but not for the rabbits.
He said it was hard to find reliable shooters but he paid them $3 a rabbit and $5 a hare "gutted, head on, skin on".
Mr Hughes said the risk management programme he operated under, administered by the Food Safety Authority, was "an asset" of the business and as important as the shooters.
"It's basically formed the backbone of our business. It's the rule book. It costs money, but you've got to have it."
Otago Regional Council group manager regional services Jeff Donaldson considers that treating rabbits as a commodity rather than a pest would inevitably lead to "rabbit farming".
He said commercialising rabbits in the past had "ended up where people would just continually remain with the level of stock so that the breeding can actually keep ahead of the reductions they were doing".
Rabbits were targeted for the damage they did to the land and the environment.
Shooting alone did not "take out" a high percentage.
"Even really good shooters are only going to remove 30% of the population. You've still got an awful lot of rabbits remaining.
"A poison [drop] can take up to 95% or even 99%, which means you have certainly stopped the breeding cycle."
On farms where rabbit numbers were under control, there would be too few to support a meat industry, Mr Donaldson said.
