Posted on 12/01/2006 2:33:53 PM PST by shrinkermd
When a food safety inspector walked into a market in Queens, he noticed the store had an interesting special posted on its front window: 12 beefy armadillos. In Brooklyn, inspectors found 15 pounds of iguana meat at a West Indian market and 200 pounds of cow lungs for sale at another market. At a West African grocery in Manhattan, the store was selling smoked rodent meat from a refrigerated display case. An inspector quickly seized a couple pounds of it.
All of it was headed for the dinner table. All of it was also illegal.
Authorities say the discoveries are part of a larger trend in which markets across New York are buying meat and other foods from unregulated sources and selling them to an immigrant population accustomed to more exotic fare.
State regulators have responded by stepping up enforcement, confiscating 65 percent more food through September than they did in all of 2005.
The seizures also cast a spotlight on the eating habits of this ethnically diverse city, where everything from turtles and fish paste to frogs and duck feet make their way onto people's plates.
"At one time or another, we've probably seen about everything," said Joseph Corby, director of the state's Division of Food Safety and Inspection.
In an attempt to stamp out the activity, Corby's agency has ramped up efforts, working with the Food and Drug Administration, to prevent this illicit food from reaching store shelves.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Long Pork is a colloquialism for Human Meat.
Tastes like Long Pork = Tastes like Human Meat
There is a widespread feeling that the Chinese are barbarians or worse because they raise dogs for slaughter. That's pure cultural bias. I don't have the least bit of personal interest in eating dog, but I can't find a moral principle by which it's A-OK to slaughter swine but not canines.
I'm also not interested in eating rat or iguana, but that's a matter of personal taste, not morality or public safety. Anyone who does prepare those meats should be held to the same rules for sanitary and humane slaughter as any other species. No more and no less.
Sorry for the lack of detail, but I heard this back when I was a kid.
I'm assuming you like tacos.
Smirk.
What red-blooded American doesn't like a little tail from time to time?
There was an outbreak of Creutzfeld-Jakob disease (the human equivalent of Mad Cow) a few years back. As the patterns became clear, it emerged that, the squirrel-eaters in the hills fell into two camps -- the ones who ate the brains and the ones who didn't. The former suffered the brunt of the CJD.
When I moved out of the house after college, one of my first purchases was a copy of The Joy of Cooking. This was before the recent revision. It was designed to be, and was very good as, a basic one-volume resource on cooking; and it included instructions on how to dress squirrel and rabbit, among other critters.
.....smoked rodent meat.....
Squirrel?
Soylent green is armadillos!
Spent a lot of my youth on my Grandfather's farm (50’s) and learned how to shoot hunting squirrels and rabbits and if we were successful … the results of our hunting would be served for dinner.
That's exactly what I was thinking when I read this article. Part of the collateral damage done to American society by illegal immigration.
Of course this was before killing and eating “cute” animals was considered wrong.
In the South Pacific, by my recollection. I've heard "Polynesian long pig" as another euphemism. They might not have come up with the old favorite "tastes like chicken," because they have a long history of eating pork, but poultry not so much.
Of course, how widespread cannibalism ever was in the South Pacific is an open question; it's a common accusation made against rival tribes, and "natives," who aren't as dumb and "primitive" as we assume, love to play "mess with the anthropologist's head." Margaret Mead's early work has been called somewhat into question because of suspicions that the Samoans were pulling her leg.
Mark
I don't have any problem with the flavor of 'gator, but the times I've tried it it's been awfully tough and stringy. I've had stringy chicken, too, so I suspect that has a lot to do with how they're raised, which cuts are used and how they're prepared.
... sheeEESH!! We're almost to 100 posts and no mention of pigeons [??]
. . . a few years ago , here in NYC, they nabbed an older fella , he caught flocks with an explosive charged net contraption IIRC , sold 'em to , ah er , well ....
This is obviously profiling, but what can you expect from an inspector that hauls off a couple of pounds of smoked rat?
Some folks get really offended by any marketing effort that isn't aimed at them. Like Kosher or Halal options at groceries or restaurants. There was a thread right here on FR a few days ago that brought howls of derisionat McDonald's for offering Halal burgers on the menu.
In the car today, I listened to Dennis Prager rant at length about the fact that a local TV station in Greenville, SC ran a 30-second Spanish-language ad for some EZ-Credit place during English-language programming. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why it was such an atrocity that someone saw a market and was trying to rip off people that weren't him.
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