Three years ago, Corey Meyer, the proprietor of Edmonton’s ACME Meat Market, was part of Team Canada at the World Butchers’ Challenge. He and his team were on the sharp end of the standings — finishing 10th out of 12 teams in Sacramento, Calif.
And, with the exception of one member, who had to leave for personal reasons, the Team Canada crew will be back for 2025’s “Olympics of meat.” The scene will be Paris. This will be the Sekai Taikai for meat-cutting. And Meyer said the Canadian team will learn a lot from 2022, and targets a much better finish this time around.
“We all left with a bitter taste in our mouths,” says Meyer of the 2022 competition, and also saves the writer from injecting his own bad puns. “We all wanted to have another go at it.”
So, what’s the goal for Paris?
“We think we have a very real shot at the top five,” he says.”And, anything above the top five is butter.”
What Meyer and his Team Canada mates learned in Sacramento was just how cutthroat the competition was. Meyer said the team knew about the events, what was going to be expected in terms of cutting, but they didn’t understand how to impress the judges. Nor, did they understand how other teams knew how to fool the judges. For example, teams were judged on how meat was trimmed and how little was left to waste. But he said savvy teams knew how to, ahem, bury their trimmings at the bottom of stockpots.
Wow, teams stabbing each other in the back? At a butchers’ competition?
“It’s not exactly cheating,” Meyer says. “But let’s say that some teams were definitely toeing the line.”
But, chicanery or not, Meyer said he’s simply blown away by the level of competition, and being able to rub shoulders with many butchers he only previously knew through Instagram posts.
“When. I’m practicing with the team, I get impostor syndrome,” he says. “It’s like, ‘what am I doing with these people?'”
