Cosi campaign encourages people to 'give goat a go' and protect the Flinders Ranges

Local media personality Andrew 'Cosi' Costello offered and sold 5000 processed goats for $99 this past week as part of his "give goat a go" campaign, with the final 3000 sold in only 20 minutes.

"People just went nuts on the offer," he said.

Cosi said he came up with the campaign after visiting the Flinders Ranges for work.

"We were filming up there recently and I kept seeing more and more goats, and you talk to any bushy out there and they say populations are booming," he said.

"And they're decimating everything in their path - there is an ecological disaster happening in the outback, and it's no one's fault. It's just supply and demand of the market.

"The price of goat has gone from like $4.50 a kilogram to $1/kg, so there is no market, no incentive for landholders to muster them anymore.

"So I thought about how I could use my position in the media to connect the local landholders, the national parks, the goat depots, the truckies, the butchers. Connect them all up and get goat meat in front of the general population.

"We have never really developed a meat market in Australia, with most goats exported, so if South Australians could improve the market by even 5pc or so - the long-term benefits would be great."

Improving the market for goat meat was just one of the issues Cosi hoped to address with the campaign.

"At the core of what we're trying to do here is create a market and say to Australians, you should put goat on your menu," he said.

"This is potentially the largest marketing campaigns ever for domestic market to domestic consumption of goat meat in SA. And it comes at a time when cost of living has never been worse.

"Red meat is one of the most shoplifted items right now in SA supermarkets.

"Yet the government has been conducting aerial culls in the Flinders since January, shooting thousands of goats to be left on the ground - a red meat resource just going to waste.

"This is an incredible opportunity to stop those culls, while also giving farmers a better market to incentivise mustering goats and help people fill their freezers for $99."

The campaign also aimed to 'support local' throughout the supply chain.

"There's no big supermarkets or global names involved," he said.

"These goats were sourced from SA, brought into a SA depot, sent to an abattoir in Two Wells, and distributed by mom and dad butcher shops that have struggled in the past couple of decades against the big supermarkets," Cosi said.

"We weren't able to offer delivery, because of the price point and logistics, but with pick-up, we hope it also inspires customers to buy other stuff while they are in the shops, and further support local business."

The specially-selected premium goats dressed out between 13-15kg, equating to between $6.60-$7.60/kg.

"This is the cheapest goat meat price I can find anywhere," Cosi said.

"I looked across Australia, in the US and even Europe, and I could not find anything remotely close to this price."

The goat carcases are being distributed through three butcher shops - Woodside, Campbelltown and Gepps Cross.

Cosi said due to the success of the program, they'll one day consider doing another 5000 as the "demand was there", but also hoped people would continue to buy goat meat.

"People can feel good knowing they're helping to address that oversupply and potentially develop the goat meat industry here in SA," he said.

But for now, Cosi said his attention would turn to another unappreciated red meat source - buffalo in the NT.

"Through my Cows for Cambodia project, we have built a facility that can handle them," he said.

"We're now in the process of figuring out how we can live export them there, before I return to Cambodia in July.

"Every buffalo that goes over there breaks the poverty cycle for 10 families, something that would have otherwise been shot from a chopper or a hunter or mustered up and processed for dog meat or even sent to Indonesia.

"These ones will hopefully live happily ever after."