TEMPLE CITY (CBSLA.com) — The Health Department has taken action after a local supermarket’s frozen foods section featured an unusual item.
Inspectors from the LA County Health Department visited the Metro Supermarket in Temple City on Tuesday, after being informed that the market was selling raccoons as food.
Employees at the market declined to appear on camera, but did show entire raccoons, frozen, bagged, and selling for $9.99 per pound. The employees say raccoon is considered a delicacy in China.
Customer Christina Dow was at the market, and upon seeing the frozen raccoons, filmed the scene on her cell phone. She shared the video on social media.
“The way it’s packaged in the store, it’s so real, and it’s so fresh, and you don’t see chickens with their feathers and blood all over them, and their expression, with their tongue hanging out,” Dow said.
Dow also went on to contact the LA County Health Department, who says that selling raccoons as food may indeed be perfectly legal, depending on the origins of the meat.
The market has ceased selling raccoons, since the department’s visit, until it and be reviewed and officially approved.
CBS2 contacted a number of local agencies, including the LA County District Attorney’s office. However, none of them were immediately able to say whether selling raccoons as food was legal or not.
Store employees say they’ve been selling raccoons for years, and never experienced any issues until now.
Hey, as long as it’s considered a delicacy in China, I’m in baby!
Why should they have to officially approve it?
Public Health.
Something is forbidden until it is approved by the authorities is not freedom.
Then go shoot your own raccoons. There’s your freedom. Grocery stores are required to follow public health and safety regulations.
Thanks Cephus.
There is a rot in the center of the brain in too many “folks” as Obama might say. Its called: Freedom.
All kinds of stupidity is foisted off on the voting public under this banner.
Mickey—stop being so stupid.
That’s a convenient excuse. The idea that everything is forbidden unless approved hidden behind ‘you’re operating a grocery store.’
Other things available for sale, goat brains, chicken livers, pigs ears.
All inspected (sic)…. such as it is.
Coon meat is really pretty good, a little greasy though. Trapper back in stone ages I was 🙂
Organic, free range and the left overs make excellent warm hats.
I say sargasso_c, when I was a child growing up and playing in the streams of my watershed which drains into the Delaware river, fresh water eels were common. Then the main stream was dammed near the Delaware and as a consequence, 1000s of square miles of watershed streams ceased to have fresh water eels. The absence of fresh water eels, having for 10s of millions of years been a part of the ecology of this watershed, and now suddenly not part of it, wrought havoc. But this is OK, because it is what D/Rs want, and eels don’t have the je ne sais quoi of snail darters or spotted owls.
Temple City, CA the city that did not bring you Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, the man that “did not create, invent or otherwise work on” bitcoin.
IMHO they are only guilty to sell it as-is without properly butchering it, otherwise no one would have give a damn about it.
Given the way they were in the bags, they may be roadkills or caught in the neighbor which makes it unsafe for human consumption.
Meanwhile, the “horrified” lady should take a trip to PA, where it’s legal to sell and eat cats and dogs’ meat (yes, meat made from cats and dogs)
There was a bill to make it illegal but it was boycotted by the NRA because it also banned live pigeon shootings, so now pet’s lovers (as in “taste”) can all rejoice.
This is just another case of culture shock by some Beverly Hills bone head (Christina Dow)…
As long as meat is “harvested” in the correct way (according to guidelines/laws established by entities like the FDA) and sold according to all other laws (enforced by entities such as local health departments and government oversight authorities like the DHA, FTC, etc.), it’s LEGAL! Go figure! As long as Uncle Sam gets his cut and says it’s OK (which is often nothing more than a money thing), you could even sell cockroach’s as meat — though some people might prefer to call it “lobster.” (FYI: they’re all “arthropods.”)
BTW, selling cat, dog, and even horse meat is also legal. Though, who would eat something like that?
I was thinking along these lines. How to strike that balance between a free market and public health.
I don’t think coon, cat, dog, should be sold in grocery stores…………….BECAUSE………… its production is so limited, there is no way to monitor its safe harvesting as you say.
But EVERYONE wants maximum freedom, what to do?
I think sale of food items so rare as to not be subject to a common production/inspected facility should be allowed but only in “casual” person to person sales. That way when you get a big dose of rabies you know who to sue. Horse meat I think does get processed somewhat in standard slaughterhouses. Hmmmm….I do wonder about that rabbit my local deli sells.
How to rationally MAXIMIZE all the relevant issues…. thats the challenge. Like AGW…. its hard.
Well, actually, it is illegal to sell horse meat for human consumption in California. The “people” so voted some years ago.
Not sure about dogs and cats.
But it’s all rather silly. Flesh is flesh, though I prefer mine butchered, trimmed, put on little trays and wrapped in Saranwrap.
There was an uproar in Fresno a while back with its influx of Hmong people. Seems they would occupy most of an apartment complex and put dirt in the swimming pool to grow bok choy. ……….. and all the stray cats and dogs disappeared. Fresno Bee ran a hard hitting investigational piece: “Dog tastes good” is all I got out of it.
Food prejudice. Like god, its all culturally determined.
Not eaten in Indonesia, but yes in Vietnam. More evidence that Bill Ayers wrote Obama’s autobiography.
Note readers of The New York Times will have to look elsewhere to understand this.
The New York Times is not a full service newspaper. It has no comics section. Feh!
Obama at the White House Correspondents Dinner made a joke about the difference between Sarah Palin and a pitbull is that pitbull is delicious, and several supposedly well-informed people were tweeting about why i Obama talking about eating dogs?
“flesh is flesh” you obviously haven’t tasted human…..
Looking foward to a batch of Some of Granny’s Possum Stew!
Since this has turned into a Food Blog:
…………and we touched on butter a post back, I came across this which is timely especially as I assume we are all caffeine junkies?
I saw this about a year ago now, and thought it was for the “taste.” I think I need to move it up on my bucket list as it has health claims too.
http://eatlocalgrown.com/article/13952-5-reasons-put-butter-in-coffee.html
I have another pound of green beans to roast myself before I go back to store bought. Once again, Peets won a contest as the best commercial brew for coffee. Must work for espresso too?
Food: its what we eat.
Ideas: Food for the Brain.
“Excuse me, but the grill marks on your racoon steaks look exactly like the tread pattern on my 225/75R17’s !”
Mmm, road kill. Almost as good as floor pie.
It’s considered a delicacy in China? It’s considered an invasive species in Japan, where they made it into a cutesy TV character. So everybody wanted one.
One problem: while baby raccoons are real cute, the adults are another matter entirely. So now there’s thousands of surly coons wandering Japan, ripping the shit out of 900 year old temples and shit. Plus, they have HANDS!!
A trillion Chinese can’t be wrong.
Don’t knock it ’till you’ve tried it fuckers.