the dustbin: are cherry squirrel kebabs ethical?

are cherry squirrel kebabs ethical?

… if they are, I have the recipe - cherry squirrel kebab, featuring “tasty squirrels, marinated in cherry brandy sauce for a great evening meal with rice and a salad”.

The ultimate ethical meal: a grey squirrel

It tastes sweet, like a cross between lamb and duck. And it’s selling as fast as butchers can get it

Caroline Davies
Sunday May 11, 2008
The Observer

It’s low in fat, low in food miles and completely free range. In fact, some claim that Sciurus carolinensis - the grey squirrel - is about as ethical a dish as it is possible to serve on a dinner plate.

The grey squirrel, the American cousin of Britain’s endangered red variety, is flying off the shelves faster than hunters can shoot them, with game butchers struggling to keep up with demand. ‘We put it on the shelf and it sells. It can be a dozen squirrels a day - and they all go,’ said David Simpson, the director of Kingsley Village shopping centre in Fraddon, Cornwall, whose game counter began selling grey squirrel meat two months ago.

At Ridley’s Fish and Game shop in Corbridge, Northumberland, the owner David Ridley says he has sold 1,000 - at £3.50 a squirrel - since he tested the market at the beginning of the year. ‘I wasn’t sure at first, and wondered would people really eat it. Now I take every squirrel I can get my hands on. I’ve had days when I have managed to get 60 and they’ve all sold straight away.’

Read the full story.

Hey Nat, what’s a nice wine to compliment squirrel kebabs?

Tags: ethical meat, grey squirrel, squirrel meat, urban free range, urban hunting, urban meat