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The Christian Science Monitor reports
Nashville residents who dropped by their local Arby's beginning [the week of November 2] could try the restaurant's limited-time-only venison, or deer meat, sandwich, which the fast-food chain debuted in commemoration of the beginning of deer hunting season.
[...] Many of the Arby's locations that are selling the sandwich are located in more populous or urban areas rather than rural areas where one might expect people to hunt. But Evan Heusinkveld, the president and CEO of the Sportsmen's Alliance, tells The Christian Science Monitor that the urban population is exactly the group that should have the opportunity to try venison.
"Many people who live in the country either have their own freezer of venison or know somebody who hunts", he says, "Selling to city dwellers is exactly what the hunting community would love to see."
While Arby's venison is sourced from farm-raised deer in New Zealand due to USDA rules against serving wild-harvested meat, it will still give customers a taste of what they're missing. The sandwich features a juicy venison steak, crispy onions, and juniper berry sauce.
Arby's venison sandwiches will be offered in just 17 locations in six states (Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Georgia) during deer season, with the promotion ending the Monday after Thanksgiving.
So far, the company says the sandwich has been a big hit.
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Sunday November 06 2016, @11:09PM
Add some natural flavors of heavy metals, a sauce of oildredge from the containership and an import-tax for transporting it half-way around the world.
Why are we transporting food across the globe at this scale?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MostCynical on Sunday November 06 2016, @11:24PM
I once tore apart a car charger for one of my phones when it died.
Cost me a few dollars at a market.
"Packed in China" on the packet
"Made in the Philippines" on the case
"Made in India" on the circuit board.
Sold to me in Australia.
Something like 20,000 or more sea miles.
No idea how anyone could make any money.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 07 2016, @02:41PM
The fossilized algae and plankton paid for most of the shipping?
Ships are actually very efficient in transporting stuff. However apparently they are very polluting because they use really dirty fuel:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/09/shipping-pollution [theguardian.com]
Confidential data from maritime industry insiders based on engine size and the quality of fuel typically used by ships and cars shows that just 15 of the world's biggest ships may now emit as much pollution as all the world's 760m cars. Low-grade ship bunker fuel (or fuel oil) has up to 2,000 times the sulphur content of diesel fuel used in US and European automobiles.
That said a lot of the components are shipped by air too nowadays, including lithium batteries: http://www.joc.com/air-cargo/cargo-airlines/phone-recall-rattles-air-cargo-confidence-lithium-battery-rules_20160929.html [joc.com]
It is believed that 30 percent of the batteries are shipped via air, but new International Civil Aviation Organization, or ICAO, standards that took effect April 1 include a temporary ban of bulk lithium ion batteries shipped as cargo on passenger aircraft, and a requirement that any cargo shipments of these batteries be at a state-of-charge no greater than 30 percent.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 07 2016, @03:38AM
Why are we transporting food across the globe at this scale?
Why not? Shipping just isn't that big a deal.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by edIII on Monday November 07 2016, @07:14AM
Again, the fucking genius speaks. I'm guessing again that this may be related to a complete and utter denial of climate change and our need to alter our behavior?
It's not environmentally sustainable to transporting meat products ~8200 miles away (NZ to Georgia) from the consumer, to the consumer, when the same meat product is available 20 miles away. That goes for just about everything.
There is a non-trivially and concerning amount of energy waste in shipping with the vast inefficiencies associated with how we source our materials and products. A tremendous amount of fuel is burned to accomplish this idiocy, and it all adds up in the overall environmental impact. The advantage of point-source energy generation for example, is quite often directly related to the costs and loss of energy during transport across long distances. Transmission lines with good equipment and low loss still approach 6% IIRC. Similarly, a hot dog from Boston may need hundreds of gallons of fuel to be transported, where as the local hot dog literally takes ~1% of the energy used.
It makes sense to import some Italian meats when you literally cannot get anywhere else, but deliberately purchasing something from across the world when it's literally in your fucking backyard?
That makes you an ignorant asshole about the true costs of an irrational consumerism based lifestyle that enjoys hiding said true costs.
There's no such thing as a free lunch, and shipping is an expensive and environmentally damaging affair. Literally. Shipping is what allowed invasive species to cross natural barriers like oceans. Just because we can is not a sufficient justification to ship anything.
Remember, this about deer that are literally walking around the fucking Arby's selling deer raised almost 10,000 miles away. Fucking crazy.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Monday November 07 2016, @10:11AM
Again, the fucking genius speaks. I'm guessing again that this may be related to a complete and utter denial of climate change and our need to alter our behavior?
It's not just the usual lack of evidence, edIII. It's bean counting logic used on transportation.
It's not environmentally sustainable to transporting meat products ~8200 miles away (NZ to Georgia) from the consumer, to the consumer, when the same meat product is available 20 miles away. That goes for just about everything.
And there we go. First, the same meat product is not available 20 miles away as the story noted. Wild game can't be sold at Arby's. Second, 8200 miles just isn't that far by water and rail. It's quite sustainable.
Similarly, a hot dog from Boston may need hundreds of gallons of fuel to be transported, where as the local hot dog literally takes ~1% of the energy used.
Transportation of a hot dog is not the primary energy cost of the hot dog. Growing the pigs locally, slaughtering them locally, and casing those hot dogs locally can indeed be more costly energy-wise than shipping in hot dogs from some far more efficient place in Boston.
We're rightly insulted when some bean counter decides to go with the lowest contractor because they can save a few beans and then loses a lot of money because they were terribly wrong about the costs. But this is the same thing. Shipping is only a small fraction of the cost of a product by any sense. Rather than babble stupidly about the unsustainability of shipping around the world (especially when it clearly is sustainable for the brief period of time that Arby's is doing the promotion), perhaps we could practice what we preach, right?
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Monday November 07 2016, @10:11AM
but deliberately purchasing something from across the world when it's literally in your fucking backyard?
Indeed. Any few trees that remain in or near suburbia are technically edge and not forest, thus perfect habitat for the deer. In a great many regions, the deer have reached plague-like numbers due to complete lack of predators, not even hunters. The things not only much down nearly all vegetation from your yard, even starvation food, they still drop dead in great numbers due to hunger and disease. The starvation weakens the population and facilitates the spread of disease which then results in a painful and very prolonged death for the animals. There are really two alternatives that don't cause misery for the homeowners and the deer: shooting them and throwing away the carcass, or shooting them and eating them. Sadly, because of the density of housing these days, either one is very difficult to arrange bureaucratically. However, harvesting them does solve several problems not the least is the waste of shipping food back and forth across the face of the Earth needlessly.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 07 2016, @10:16AM
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Monday November 07 2016, @10:38AM
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 07 2016, @05:11PM
What would it take for the US corporate culture to be changed enough to produce safe food let alone safely harvest wild food?
A regulator to approve it. That's all that is required from "US corporate culture".
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday November 07 2016, @01:04PM
Sadly, because of the density of housing these days
This probably drops the dox on where I live, but I live in a well known outdoors recreation state and over the course of my lifetime the gun deer season seems to get shorter every year now down to about ten days around thanksgiving and the bow deer season gets longer now basically the entire fall until its -20F at night and the DNR thinks allowing hunting would result in bad PR from too many drunken hunter-icicles freezing at night. We're rapidly approaching the point where bow deer season is basically labor day till new years.
Note I don't hunt, but because of where I live everyone else hunts, so some of my data might be off, but not by much...
Anyway my point is it would be fairly reckless to allow gun hunting in urban areas because of rounds that fly right thru both sides of houses and into the next house etc but even in cheap bubble areas I don't think a hunting arrow would make it thru a wall. Maybe shatter a window, worst case. Bow hunting has the virtue of also being silent.
facilitates the spread of disease
The state I live in has a CWD disease population and my hunting coworkers keep bringing in venison jerky for everyone and I keep politely turning it down. No one in an outdoor recreation state wants to hear that 2000 years ago religions prohibited pig consumption because without industrial era control and care given to cooking you'll get all kinds of interesting worm infections and disease issues, and like it or not, that's how venison is now, I'm not eating that stuff until the odds of CWD infection drop from 10% or whatever it is (50%?) to basically zero. Also unlike (gross) intestinal worms there is no treatment if a human gets the human equivalent of CWD. It just seems foolish to eat venison in 2016 and the only thing that could make it worse would be less hunting leading to some kind of zombie plague of CWD infected deer.
Several of my coworkers have dropped out of deer hunting but have begun turkey hunting... they do believe they're going to serve a thanksgiving turkey that they caught. Some success, some failure. Its more or less the same timeperiod, at least in this state, so its fully compatible with the deer hunting lifestyle. I'm uneducated enough in the world of poultry to know if wild turkeys have any exciting diseases, that are worse than salmonella chicken from the food store anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 07 2016, @02:50PM
You underestimate the penetrating power of a serious hunting bow. A brick wall will stop one, but it will go right through a couple of layers of siding and drywall, with plenty of oompf left to puncture a human.
Mine was only a 65lb draw, and it would go right through an eight inch high stack of flat paper.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday November 07 2016, @05:05PM
It's about bulk. Your hot dog example is flawed because you don't say how many miles or hot dogs are being shipped for those hundreds of gallons of fuel. Of course it would be immensly wasteful to only transport one hotdog at a time. But once you factor in the bulk factor, the efficiency goes up.
Assuming worst case scenario:
A box of hotdogs [foodservicedirect.com] weighs about 10.5 pounds and contains 80 wieners.
The wiener boxes appear to be 12x12x6 which should fit a gross (144) of cases on a standard 40x48 skid.
A 53 foot van trailer can hold 30 40x48 skids.
A semi truck has a guaranteed interstate gross weight of 80,000lbs, about half of which is consumed by the weight of the tractor and trailer (reefer trailer). So figure 40,000 lbs cargo capacity.
We cant legally max out the wiener count to cargo capacity otherwise the truck would be overweight. So lets shoot for a safe load of 3800 cases.
That's 304,000 weiners at approx 40,000lbs.
I want to transport those wieners from lets say San Francisco to new york city. That's about 3000 miles by road.
The average US MPG for a semi is 6.5 mpg, fully loaded.
A 3000 mile trip will consume 461 gallons of fuel.
That's 0.0015 gallons or 5.75 ml per wiener. Not too bad.