This B.C. butcher is showing off her chops on an international stage | Canada Voices

Mastering It is a summer series to introduce you to Canadians who have sought to rise above being simply good at their chosen endeavour – and who, by perfecting their skill, strive to become the best.

The meat hits the table with a thud. Taryn Barker leans into the primal cut of pork shoulder, pushing a handsaw through skin and fat and muscle, the blade’s teeth rasping in steady rhythm as they tear through bone. A final crack separates the butt from the picnic, the two halves falling open like a well-read book.

Behind her is a flurry of activity as staff process a new haul into the butcher shop, trimming beef cuts and deboning chicken, assembling the items in a display case that is not merely stocked but curated, a veritable gallery of finely cut meats.

Ms. Barker is the owner of the Little Butcher, a popular butcher shop in Port Moody, B.C. The shop put a focus on sourcing locally long before this year’s trade war with the United States made it an act of patriotism; all meats and about 95 per cent of all products are sourced from British Columbia. Customers are greeted with a wall of local products: hot sauces from Victoria, seasonings from Vancouver, pickles from Falkland.

But a small display of merchandise inside the store hints at more; at 36, Ms. Barker has honed her skills for two decades and butchered competitively on the international stage, representing Canada in what’s been referred to as “the Olympics of meat.”

Ms. Barker got her start in butchery at the age of 16, working part time in customer service at a butcher shop in Langley. She took on more hours and responsibilities after graduation, along with other part-time jobs in the food-service industry. In 2012, she co-opened a second location in Port Moody with her boss; five years later, she would buy him out to become that shop’s sole owner.

As a fledgling small-business owner, Ms. Barker befriended like-minded others and learned about the outsized effects that even a small shift toward buying local could have on a community. She quickly decided that she would pivot her business to support independent food producers as much as possible.

But supporting local farmers presented Ms. Barker with a challenge. At that point, she was skilled at processing “block-ready” meat – large, untrimmed cuts of meat that need to be further broken down to be retail-ready – but not whole animals.

“At some point, I was like, I need to learn how to break down whole animals because that’s the only way I’m going to be able to work with small farms – if I buy the whole pig or the whole cow from them,” she said. “I needed to learn this, so I signed up.”

Ms. Barker registered as an apprentice under a provincial skilled trades training program, enlisting a family friend and colleague as her mentor. Over several months, the two would pore through textbook materials and break down whole animals, Ms. Barker growing confident through practice and repetition.

She studied detailed animal anatomy to guide her cuts and understand how muscle and bone affect taste and tenderness. She became skilled at using meat saws, band saws and cleavers. She learned how to make smarter cuts, using as much of an animal as possible while reducing waste.

Ten years later, the Little Butcher now processes one whole cow, two whole pigs and around 150 chickens every week. A whole lamb arrives every two to four weeks.

The challenge now is ensuring less popular cuts of meat are not wasted, she says. This has required a mix of education and creativity. She will tell customers, for example, that a pork picnic is as flavourful and versatile as a pork butt, and often less expensive. Pork hocks can be braised or smoked, or used in collagen-rich stews. Chicken drums, the least popular part of a chicken, are deboned, stuffed or marinated.

In 2018, Ms. Barker made her competitive butchering debut in Auckland, New Zealand, at Butcher Wars, an international contest for individual butchers. She recalls being blown away by the creativity she witnessed.

“I just had a tablecloth on the presentation table with little white plates and the meat, and I thought, ‘This is great. It looks so good. Stoked,’” she said. “And then other people had crazy displays built. One guy had a little tricycle with picnic basket and all his products were displayed to look like a small picnic. I was just like, ‘Oh my gosh, what is happening?’”

Ms. Barker placed sixth in that competition, and fourth in a second Butcher Wars contest the following year, in São Paulo, Brazil.

She has also represented the country twice as part of Butchery Team Canada at the World Butchers’ Challenge. The competition is conducted over three-and-a-half hours, with each national team being given a side of beef, a side of pork, a whole lamb and five chickens that they must transform into creative, themed and value-added products that could still be sold in a retail setting.

Ms. Barker said Team Canada faced a steep learning curve on its initial go, being docked points for “silly mistakes” such as not having perfectly matching uniforms. But a renewed focus on practice for the next competition, held this spring in Paris, saw Butchery Team Canada place fifth out of 14 countries, 1.55 points behind first-place finisher France.

Video from the competition shows a sprawling spread of colourful medallions, ribs, skewers, steaks, drums and sausages accented with flowers and red-yellow maple leaves: the four seasons of Canada. A team photo shows Ms. Barker, petite and grinning, flanked by seven male teammates.

Ms. Barker says the international competitions have opened her eyes to how much more is possible.

“I would love to learn more about charcuterie, so that with my whole animals, things like the head and the trotters, we can be utilizing to make some really beautiful products,” she said, citing fromage de tête (head cheese) as an example.

“The whole butchery industry is so vast, and there is so much to learn. That is really exciting to me.”