DailyDirt: Exporting Weird Meats

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Some people don't eat meat at all for a variety of reasons, and some omnivores are just picky about the types of meat they eat. There are a lot of other animals besides cows and pigs. Here are just a few less commonly consumed meats that seem more suitable for exporting.

• Puerto Rico is planning to get rid of its overpopulation of iguanas by exporting the meat of this lizard -- and selling it for up to $6 per pound. These reptiles aren't native to the island, but since they were introduced in the 1970s, the creatures have thrived -- and currently outnumber the human population in Puerto Rico. [url]
• There's an interesting outlier in the trade imbalance between the US and China -- American chicken farmers supply China with a vast number of chicken feet. And US researchers somewhere are working on genetically modified chickens to grow more than two feet... [url]
• After years without USDA funding for the inspection of slaughterhouses for horses, Congress lifted the inspection ban in 2011. Horse flesh isn't expected to become a widely popular entree in the US, but some 200,000 horses per year could be processed and exported. [url]
• To discover more food-related links, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: chicken feet, china, horses, iguanas, meat, puerto rico
Companies: usda