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Healthy Home Economist / Archives / Activism / Health Dept to Homeless: You Can’t Eat Deer Meat

Health Dept to Homeless: You Can’t Eat Deer Meat

by Sarah Pope / Affiliate Links ✔

deer meat not allowed for the homeless

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

Bloomberg Bans Food Donations for the Homeless

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Category: Activism, Healthy Living
Sarah Pope

Sarah Pope MGA has been a Health and Nutrition Educator since 2002. She is a summa cum laude graduate in Economics from Furman University and holds a Master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

She is the author of three books: the bestseller Get Your Fats Straight, Traditional Remedies for Modern Families, and Living Green in an Artificial World.

Her four eBooks Good Diet…Bad Diet, Real Food Fermentation, Ketonomics, and Ancestrally Inspired Dairy-Free Recipes are available for complimentary download via Healthy Home Plus.

Her mission is dedicated to helping families effectively incorporate the principles of ancestral diets within the modern household. She is a sought after lecturer around the world for conferences, summits, and podcasts.

Sarah was awarded Activist of the Year in 2010 at the International Wise Traditions Conference, subsequently serving on the Board of Directors of the nutrition nonprofit the Weston A. Price Foundation for seven years.

Her work has been covered by numerous independent and major media including USA Today, ABC, and NBC among many others.

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Reader Interactions

Comments (174)

  1. Matt

    Jul 19, 2018 at 11:28 pm

    So, apparently twinkies , doughnuts, potato chips, all manner of meals with MSG, meat with antibiotics, hormones and chemicals to kill pests are all ok, but venison is not ok to feed the homeless? lol. Wild venison is one of the leanest, most nutritious meats on earth.
    When they made this decision, did they cite a single person, in all of the US, who has died from eating venison? Do they have any data that shows that people are more likely to die or get sick from eating wild venison than any other meat, if it is prepared the same way? I doubt it.
    I can guarantee that I know the political party affiliation of these bureaucrats, let’s just leave it at that.

    Reply
  2. Tim Fitzgerald

    Feb 22, 2017 at 10:23 pm

    What about wanton waste laws ?

    Reply
  3. Derek

    Dec 22, 2013 at 8:22 am

    I work for a Health Dept and here are facts. The inspectors responding to the complaint had no choice, the deer meat is from an unapproved source and is therefore considered a public health hazard. All public health hazards have to be corrected on the spot per public health law so the product had to be discarded and denatured. Using chorine is a way of distroying the product, not so wild animals can’t have it but to satisfy public health law. If people don’t like this than contact your lawmakers to change the laws.

    Reply
    • Matt

      Apr 23, 2015 at 5:59 pm

      you are a parasite, that is a fact.

    • Becky

      Apr 23, 2015 at 6:23 pm

      So….eating fake food like McDonald’s is a lot safer than actual NATURAL hunted game? There’s a difference between arrogance and safety—and the health department is far from common sense safety.

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