A CONTROVERSIAL project looking to create a market for Dartmoor hill ponies to protect the breed for future generations has come to fruition, with the meat being sold at Tavistock Farmers’ Market this Saturday.

The campaign for human consumption of pony meat was started a year ago, spearheaded by pony conservationist Charlotte Faulkner.

The plight of the Dartmoor pony has become difficult over the past few years, with a huge downturn in demand for the animals. The downturn has led to the decline and closure of pony sales, which means farmers hardly make any money on the animals, making looking after them increasingly more difficult.

Ms Faulkner, who has also spearheaded the pony contraception scheme, previously told the Times that of the 900 or so foals that are born every year, 30% are homed through riding, driving, conservation and as companions, 10% go back into replenishing the herds and 60% of the foals are shot.

She said using the contraception scheme and creating a market for meat would be a solution to save the viability of the breed.

‘Using both these solutions together would mean the farmers could breed from fewer ponies and keep the offspring for three years,’ she said. ‘These three-year-olds can then either be put into training as riding/driving ponies, which they excel at, or be sold for meat. There is more of a market for trained three year olds than wild foals, so the majority will be homed.’

She said many farmers had stopped keeping ponies as they were no longer viable and a way to make them profitable needed to be found, otherwise the moor wouldn’t be grazed properly, gorse would flourish, making areas inaccessible and would cause tourist trade to drop.

Ms Faulkner has since set up a co-operative of various organisations called Dartmoor Conservation Meat, which applied to have a stand at Tavistock Farmers’ Market. She had a stall at the cattle market at Tavistock’s Goose Fair this year where she first sold the meat — thought to be the first time it has been on sale in the UK — and the meat will be on sale at the farmers’ market for the first time this Saturday.

Being called ‘Taffety’ locally, which means ‘delicate on the tongue’ in Devon dialect, the meat is said to be lean, low in fat and high in protein with a taste similar to beef but with a ‘sweeter, subtle game flavour’.

Liz Whitwell, manager of Tavistock Farmers’ Market, said: ‘Dartmoor Conservation Meat approached us in the summer to ask to have a stand. We had a meeting with them and they met all our criteria for traders.

‘Once we had established that they met all our criteria, we asked current producers and traders at the market how they felt about it and the majority supported the idea.

‘We also did some market research with our customers on one day at the market, asking what they thought of it. We asked our customers if they should be allowed to sell pony meat at the market and 67 per cent said yes. Some people are against it and if they choose not to buy it, that is their choice.’

Mrs Whitwell said the Rare Breed Survival Trust had preserved some of Britain’s native livestock breeds by creating a market for them, in a similar way that Dartmoor Conservation Meat was doing for Dartmoor ponies.

‘From our point of view it is a really big conservation issue,’ she said. ‘All of this is about preserving the breed and the landscape. If the farmers can get some money out of the foals, they will look after them better.

‘We are an award-winning market and judges have been blown away by the wide range of local produce we sell and this is just another string to our bow.’