The winner of the country's top lamb award has lost the title but through no fault of his own.
The organisers of the Golden Lamb Awards, known as the Glammies, have declared them a no-contest this year, following a mistake in the process used to calculate the top 20 contestants.
Dannevirke sheep and beef farmer Hamish Buchanan, who was named the grand champion for producing the most tender and tasty lamb, said the decision to declare this year's contest null and void is disappointing, but is the fairest way to deal with it.
"I guess I've come to terms with it now, but I was just a wee bit deflated, because you get given a trophy and a cheque and you feel pretty good about yourself, that you've actually produced something that's quite a worthy product.
"And I guess I still believe that I've produced a worthy product, but now, everything that's happened in the last two weeks has come to nothing."
The promotional body Beef and Lamb New Zealand said the testing facility discovered and confirmed the mistake last week.
Beef and Lamb's chief executive Rod Slater said a no-contest was the only answer because the process to decide the top 20 rankings was not done correctly.
"The laboroatory who I have the utmost respect for and do a mangnificent job for us, inadvertently, first of all scored the low ranking tenderness, which is the way it should be, but secondly, instead of scoring it by the high ranking yield, they scored it by the low ranking yield, so we had low-low, instead of high-low, so that absolutely skewed all the results, so we finished up with 20 finalists which on the face of it, may not have made it."
