A total of 36 of the nation's top independent retail butchers have won their way through regional and State-level competitions to earn the right to take part in the national final, being held in Queensland for the first time.

The event will be staged before a large crowd at Kurrawa Surf Club at Broadbeach this Saturday, with six divisions being contested for beef, pork, lamb, continental, gourmet and poultry sausages.

The Queensland team includes five well-known country and regional butchers who won the right to represent their State at the Queensland finals last August:

• Jandowae's Graham Nelson, from Nelson Family Meats will tackle interstate competitors in the continental category.
• Previous winner Rob Ashton from Ashton's Butchery, Pittsworth will contest the gourmet class.
• Daryl and Lyn Bein from Miles Wholesale Meats will represent Queensland in the beef class.
• Norm Milner from Norm Milner Butchers, Rockhampton is the poultry sausage representative.
• Toowoo mba's Mark Nolan, from Gray's Modern Meat Mart will present Queensland's lamb class entry.
• Joey Mills from Redland Bay Quality Meats will tackle the interstate competition in the pork category.

Many of the interstate competitors from NSW, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia will attend the national finals in person, such is the prestige attached to winning a national crown across the industry.

Launched by the Australian Meat Industry Council as a low-key novelty event honouring the humble snag in 1994, the Sausage Kings competition proved enormously popular, going national within five years.

Today, entries within Queens-land alone regularly top 1000 each year, with heats held in six regional centres before a state final staged during the Brisbane Show.

The judging process is carried out under a tight set of parameters using a scoring system based on cooked and raw appearance, composition, presentation, and most importantly, flavour, texture and juiciness.

AMIC will host a presentation dinner from 7.30pm on Saturday evening to distribute the prizes among the lucky winners.