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Deer are regularly hunted across the United States, but some people pay exorbitant prices for imported deer meat:
Wintertime is a special time of year at Cafe Berlin, located just a few blocks from the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. This is when they roll out their menu of wild game, such as deer, wild boar, and quail. Regular customers have come to expect it. "They ask, weeks in advance, 'When does the wild game menu start? When does it start?'" says James Watson, one of the restaurant's chefs. And the star of that menu is venison. The restaurant serves venison ribs, venison loin, even venison tartar. It's food that takes your mind back to old European castles, where you can imagine eating like aristocracy.
You won't see venison in ordinary supermarkets. At Wagshall's, a specialty food shop in Washington, I found venison loin selling for $40 a pound. This venison comes from farms, usually from a species of very large deer called red deer. Much of it is imported from New Zealand.
Yet there's a very different side to this luxury meat. Less than two hours drive from Washington, Daniel Crigler has a whole freezer full of venison that he got for free. Crigler's home in central Virginia is surrounded by woodlands full of white-tail deer. For Crigler, they are venison on the hoof. And he loves hunting. "I love the outdoors. I love being out. But I also like to eat the meat," he says, chuckling. It's pretty much the only red meat he eats. And as he shows off the frozen cuts of venison in his freezer, this crusty man reveals his inner epicurean. "That's a whole loin, right there," he says. "What I like to do with that is split it open, fill it full of blue cheese, wrap it up in tin foil and put it on the grill for about an hour and a half."
And here's the odd thing about this meat, so scarce and expensive in big cities; so abundant if you're a hunter in Madison County, Virginia. Hunters like Crigler kill millions of deer every year in America, but the meat from those animals can't be sold: It hasn't been officially approved by meat inspectors. Also, the government doesn't want hunters to make money from poaching. Yet hunters are allowed to give it away, and many do. As a result, venison occupies a paradoxical place in the world of food. It's a luxury food that turns up in notably non-luxurious places.
Related: Arby's is Selling Venison Sandwiches in Six Deer-Hunting States
Deer in Multiple U.S. States Test Positive for Chronic Wasting Disease, Leading to Restrictions
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Thursday January 04 2018, @03:07AM (8 children)
Tastes vary. Widely. That said, I agree with you.
To me, venison tastes like toasted dog poop. The only meat worse than venison I've had the displeasure of trying is antelope, which is an incredible insult to my palette.
A lot of beef isn't very appealing to me either, though; it takes a good cut and a skilled cook to being beef into my "hey, that's good" zone. Luckily, one of those lives with me. :)
I keep hoping the whole artificial meat thing will bring a consistently delicious, non-cow-harming beef "cut" to my table, but... nothing so far. I'm beginning to think I won't see it before I shuffle off this mortal coil. That, AI, human space travel outside low earth orbit, and a working fusion system.
OTOH, I lived through the sexual revolution, so... win.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday January 04 2018, @03:20AM (4 children)
That's why we need anti-aging first. And avoid prion diseases in the meantime.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Thursday January 04 2018, @05:11AM (3 children)
Anti aging would be good if you're young-ish. Aging reversal is the only thing that would help me. :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @05:54AM (2 children)
Initial stem cell aging reversal treatments:
Pros: you're a younger person.
Cons: you're a different younger person...
But I suppose if you have the same memories, would you be bothered enough that your preferences gradually change to be closer to those of the donor stem cells?
Even the "you" at 2 years old from a DNA perspective might be significantly different from the you at 70 years: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/brain-dna-changes-through-life-2378009.html [independent.co.uk]
https://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/51118/title/Thousands-of-Mutations-Accumulate-in-the-Human-Brain-Over-a-Lifetime/ [the-scientist.com]
https://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/50700/title/Advancing-Techniques-Reveal-the-Brain-s-Impressive-Diversity/ [the-scientist.com]
Which "you" would you want to drift towards if you had the choice? Your 2 year old self? Your 20 year old self? Some top athlete? ;)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 04 2018, @06:18AM
Is this a trick question?
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Thursday January 04 2018, @06:27AM
Don't repeat this meme (which you partially rebutted in the next line).
You're a different person cellularly and mentally week to week. You're accumulating mutations somewhere in your body's cells every millisecond [madsci.org]. Mentally, your memory is very fuzzy. For most people, the further back into the past they try to recall, the more they "edit" or remove the memory. Witness testimony is considered unreliable because aside from a few photographic/savant types, human memory really is quite imperfect. I was about to say "bad", but "imperfect" could be a good thing since your brain can "remix" old memories to come up with new and better ideas.
Neurogenesis [wikipedia.org] already happens in your brain throughout life, and every other part of your body doesn't matter (might as well lop those limbs off and replace them with advanced prosthetics).
I cringe whenever this is used as an objection to anti-aging (you seem to have brought it up more as a curiosity).
Theoretically, your youngest self would have the "least mutated" DNA, which would presumably be better. It should be possible to get the almost entirely unmutated genomic sequence by sequencing multiple cells and just comparing them. Once you have that, edits could be made to correct mutations you were born with or do other optimizations. Then the digital sequence can be synthesized and used in synthetically created stem cells (if that is the approach you are going with). Because there may be other treatments for aging that end up working better than stem cells. Such as nanobots.
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(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday January 04 2018, @02:50PM
A lot of people groused when Ted Turner started raising bison on his ranch (they were mostly cattle ranchers concerned their herds would contract bucellosis that bison carry), but I'm glad he has popularized bison meat because I can't have my beloved beef any more.
I'm a little surprised you dislike venison so much when the animals you can get out where you are taste so much milder than the ones west of the Divide.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Goghit on Thursday January 04 2018, @03:52PM (1 child)
"Tastes vary. Widely."
Agreed.
"To me, venison tastes like toasted dog poop."
-15 Flamebait/Tasteless Troll
Well, unless you're talking about venison that was gut shot or not properly bled out and carefully eviscerated immediately, in which case I'm back to agreeing with you. Too many hunters are gormless twits about this.
I'm a little biased. I grew up in a subsitance hunting environment and didn't taste beef until I was four years old. Apparently I asked my parents why this deer meat tasted funny. And now here I sit, planning to expand the lentil/dried bean section of the 2018 garden.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Friday January 05 2018, @05:55PM
Meh. It's an opinion. We all have them. Super-taster (high density taste buds) here. Most foods make strong, complex impressions on me. I reserve the right to share those opinions - and I'm not trying to be offensive, just telling it like I see it.
But anyway, what part of "To me," did you fail to absorb? I didn't say it tasted like dog poop to you.
So are we all. That's the thing about taste. Of all kinds.
Are you leaning towards these instead of meats, or just using these more in other ways?