Add Louisiana to the list of state and local governments around the United States that are forcing homeless people who look to shelters and soup kitchens for meals toward an all processed food, junk diet.
The former Mayor of New York City, otherwise known as Nanny Bloomberg, famously banned food donations to homeless shelters, even from charities donating freshly cooked traditional foods that had long-standing and excellent track records.
Now, the Department of Health and Hospitals in Louisiana has ordered the privately funded Shreveport-Bossier Rescue Mission to dump 1,600 pounds of venison donated by Hunters for the Hungry into garbage bins. It seems the state would have be more comfortable if the hunters had donated this form of venison instead!
Yes, just as ridiculous!
Here’s the kicker. The staff was also instructed to split open the packages of meat and pour Clorox on them as an “extra precaution so that animals would not eat it from the dumpster and become sick or die.”
Wild animals getting sick from eating what they’ve always been eating … wild game? What planet are these bureaucrats living on?
While there would have been good reason for this order had deer in the area been found to have some sort of infectious illness or the meat itself was tested and found to be tainted, the fact is that there was no good reason for this order.
There was absolutely nothing wrong with this meat.
It is simply another case of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats running amok and crazed with their own power, barking out orders to privately run organizations and law abiding citizens.
It seems that health authorities would rather homeless people be eating drug residue laced meat from sick animals confined on filthy, disease ridden feedlots than from healthy wild game freely roaming and eating natural forage.
Henry Martin, executive director of the mission, said that the staff has been serving deer meat for years in dishes such as deer chili and deer spaghetti.
“This was really good meat. It’s high in protein and low in cholesterol. It’s very healthy.”
Martin continued by saying that he was extremely concerned about the way state health inspectors handled the situation. No due process was followed. They just ordered the meat to be destroyed and that was that.
Martin said that the rescue mission serves 200,000 meals a year and not one cent comes from the state or federal government. He estimated that the senseless confiscation resulted in as many as 3,200 healthy meals being lost.
“It seems like this was a senseless act, I don’t think hungry people who come to our mission appreciate the fact they could have been eating some really good venison and as it is now — no one can eat it.”
Louisiana State Rep. Jeff Thompson, a hunter himself who has personally donated deer to this mission before, was outraged.
“You hear about these stories anywhere and it’s a concern — but when it happens in your own backyard it’s insulting.”
Thompson said that he intends to meet with the heads of the state agencies along with state lawmakers over the incident. He said that the meat should, at the very least, have been returned to the hunters who donated it.
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
Sources: Health Dept: Homeless Can’t Eat Deer Meat
Why did not the hostel cook or give it away quickly? was the hostel supervised while they did this?
Heartbreaking….
Several years ago now, a herd of deer that was living near the Philly airport & which was a safety issue because of deer that would come onto the runway was thinned out / removed by sharp-shooters. All of this meat was donated to local foodbanks. So not everyone is crazy.
Sick.
The government has to control that wild real food! Can’t have people undermining the pink slime now, can we?
Valuable information. Fortunate me I discovered your web site by chance, and I am shocked why this accident didn’t came about in advance! I bookmarked it.
I am just saying the threat of “Mad Cow” is either greatly over- or under- reported (not sure which). I would like to believe speculation, which states the prion could actually be more of a symptom than the cause – potentially the result of autoimmune disease, magnesium deficiency, etc. If not, I am concerned many of us reading this article could already be carriers, through no fault of our own. I figure the members of this site can give me a fair evaluation of this subject; it would be much appreciated!
Wild food is becoming problematic, since civilization/farms are encroaching nature more and more, and wildlife are finding their environment is becoming more and more the very farms that bound them. Farms in which they can eat gmo crops or contract prions from improperly raised livestock, and then spread them over to other deer. With wild, far ranging game, like deer, to my sensibilities, it is a risk, since I don’t have the knowledge of what that deer ate, or if it came into contact with other infected animals/pastures. I believe in the US and Canada, at least, to be safe, one can only assume prions are out and about in the wild. An infected animal may not show symptoms until old, so you really will never know.
You are referencing the prion found in certain deer and elk populations,I believe.this is primarily in Colorado and Wyoming.the deer in northwest louisiana are known to be prion free(due to goverment testing).i am from the area and had occaision to both serve and eat the food at this particular rescue mission from the article.i know for a personal fact that the people who run the place go out of thier way to feed these people the best food that they possibly can.they dont just feed the folks who stay there either,but also anybody who comes there off the street for what is often the only meal they’ve eaten all day.also hunting and eating deer is really big in the shreveport/bossier area,part of everyday life.and yes,there are fine resteraunts that serve venison there as well,so how is that meat inspected and allowed but this meat is deemed unacceptable and no way to inspect it
So then what are your thoughts on the VCJD (a variation of the “mad cow,” which affects wild game)? Does mad cow disease actually exist? If so, nearly all of us could be at grave risk. In theory the only way to destroy this prion would be exposure to extreme temperature; otherwise it would remain in our soil and water as well, correct? If that is in fact the case, I for one would steer clear of any deer meat and advise any sane person do the same. # Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease
This makes me so mad. I would have been happy to take that meat.
Sometimes the bureaucrats are brainwashed about what’s healthy and what’s not, just like the rest of the population. They’re trying to protect people, but like everyone else, they follow the US food pyramid. How many bureaucrats or non-bureacrats in the US believe that lard or liver is healthy? Very few! The government is not the problem, it’s all of the poor food marketing by the food police and corporations!