21-09-2018, 02:34 PM
10951
Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)
When the Copenhagen Zoo on Sunday killed a giraffe whose genes it couldn’t use in its breeding program, it fed the carcass to the zoo’s lions. While the general public was appalled at the zoo’s decision, the carcass did provide those carnivores with some of the meat they would have consumed in the wild, still attached to the body of their natural prey. The New York Times pointed out that “the species is not endangered, but it faces threats from habitat loss and hunting.” After that, it was hard not to wonder: If people hunt giraffes, they must eat them. And if so, what does the meat taste like? The descriptions we found, while intriguing, still did not make us want to try it.While not all giraffe hunting is illegal — people pay handsomely for safaris on private land in South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe — many of those who harvest these long-necked herbivores are poachers trafficking in bushmeat. That catch-all term refers to meat taken from animals in the African wild, usually illegally and with no regard for the health of animal populations.
As one game warden in Kenya told the Africa Review news site, giraffes “are now easy targets for poachers because the animals have a lot of meat on their bones. Meat [from] one giraffe can be equal to meat that one gets from four elands [antelopes].” The meat is frequently sold extremely cheaply, and the often-minimal fines for trading in it can be frustratingly ineffective at preventing it.
But the meat can be obtained legitimately, both in Africa and apparently here in the United States, sometimes appearing on restaurant menus. A restaurant called Panache opened in Killington, Vermont, around 1994 or so, offering a menu of exotic meats that included giraffe. According to the Boston Phoenix in 1997, that offering consisted of “a red meat that was served very rare, which made it extra tender. It had a melt-in-your-mouth quality.”
21-09-2018, 02:36 PM
10952
Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)
Originally Posted by Sweetie pie
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When the Copenhagen Zoo on Sunday killed a giraffe whose genes it couldn’t use in its breeding program, it fed the carcass to the zoo’s lions. While the general public was appalled at the zoo’s decision, the carcass did provide those carnivores with some of the meat they would have consumed in the wild, still attached to the body of their natural prey. The New York Times pointed out that “the species is not endangered, but it faces threats from habitat loss and hunting.” After that, it was hard not to wonder: If people hunt giraffes, they must eat them. And if so, what does the meat taste like? The descriptions we found, while intriguing, still did not make us want to try it.While not all giraffe hunting is illegal — people pay handsomely for safaris on private land in South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe — many of those who harvest these long-necked herbivores are poachers trafficking in bushmeat. That catch-all term refers to meat taken from animals in the African wild, usually illegally and with no regard for the health of animal populations.
As one game warden in Kenya told the Africa Review news site, giraffes “are now easy targets for poachers because the animals have a lot of meat on their bones. Meat [from] one giraffe can be equal to meat that one gets from four elands [antelopes].” The meat is frequently sold extremely cheaply, and the often-minimal fines for trading in it can be frustratingly ineffective at preventing it.
But the meat can be obtained legitimately, both in Africa and apparently here in the United States, sometimes appearing on restaurant menus. A restaurant called Panache opened in Killington, Vermont, around 1994 or so, offering a menu of exotic meats that included giraffe. According to the Boston Phoenix in 1997, that offering consisted of “a red meat that was served very rare, which made it extra tender. It had a melt-in-your-mouth quality.”
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