"roadkill" news and stories

Several news sources have recently pondered, is roadkill safe to eat?

The answer? Well, sort of.

On the pro-roadkill eating side:
If an animal was recently killed but otherwise healthy, the meat is actually much fresher than what you might find in a grocery store, explained Steve Rinella of the Travel Channel's "The Wild Within" on HuffPost Food recently (see his video of finding and preparing raccoon roadkill, after the jump). Daniel Klein of "The Perennial Palate" has a similar philosophy in this video, in which he prepares venison tartare from a deer collected from the side of the road that was "still steaming."

Even PETA basically agrees with both men. The animal-rights group advises, "If people must eat animal carcasses, roadkill is a superior option to the neatly shrink-wrapped plastic packages of meat in the supermarket."

Most recently, Food Safety News interviewed several roadkill-eating enthusiasts and gathered that there are a few good general rules of thumb to follow, such as the fact that eating roadkill in the winter may be safer since the animal is essentially refrigerated upon its death. Rinella adds that for raccoons, when the blood has not yet coagulated and the hair is not oily, those are both good signs that the animal was recently killed and therefore okay to eat.

Well, some of the festivals on this list are only slightly bizarre, but others are really out there.

Last month ForbesTraveler.com brought us a short list of some of the weirdest food festivals from around the country. The grouped the fests into three categories: regional cuisine, the truly bizarre, and those "that focus so intently upon a specific food, however common, that they elevate them to the status of bizarre."

The article was entertaining and informative. It piqued my curiosity: I think I really do want to go to the Road Kill Cook-off in West Virginia (even though they don't allow actual road kill). However, you can keep the Chitlin' Strut (South Carolina) and the Bugfest (North Carolina). Anyone up for the Gilroy Garlic Festival (California)?

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When I first saw Mario Batali's new paperback Mario Tailgates NASCAR Style on Jessica's Biscuit, I thought it was a joke. I got my hands on a copy at a local bookstore today and, indeed, it's real. Apparently Mario likes NASCAR. At least, that's what the introduction lead me to believe, as he speaks of NASCAR fans in the first person plural. The recipes are a combination of American "cookout" food and some recycled items from Mario's previous books. Ham and cheese biscuits and "Mario's Kick Ass Barbecue Sauce" mingle with pork braciolona and grilled lobster with Limoncello. I just don't know about the logistics of stuffing, trussing and braising a pork shoulder in a tailgait environment. Still, I have to give the man credit for continuing to broaden the palate of the average joe. But with Mario's well-known penchant for using unusual meats, I'm a little surprised that I didn't see any roadkill cookery in here. Maybe I just didn't look hard enough.

As appetizing as roadkill ordinarily is, I still don't think that I would eat it. Ever. Surely the 5 second rule will have long since ceased to apply to the "food" unless you were the one who hit it with your car, which is not really the most humane way to procure food. There are some people who have a substantially different view, though, and Arthur Boyt is one of them.

Mr. Boyt eats roadkill. Frequently. In fact, the only time he doesn't eat roadkill is on the occasions when he dines out. He started eating it 50 years ago, collecting it near his home in Cornwall, England, as a way to save money. Now 66 years old, he hopes to publish a roadkill cook book that contains all of his favorite recipes for meats such as badger, hedgehog, rabbit and rat. He has eaten hunting dogs (lurchers), cats, squirrels, foxes, mice, deer and pigeons. A Labrador he once found tasted "just like a nice piece of lamb," though he finds cats to be "a bit bland." His favorite food is a badger sandwich made primarily with head meat.

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