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An official in the Indian state of Bihar has come up with a new idea to encourage low caste poor people to cope with food shortages – rat meat. The Principal Secretary of the state’s Welfare Department, Vijay Prakash, said that he was advancing his proposal after “much survey and ground work”.
Bihar’s extremely poor Musahar community are rat-eaters by tradition. The Musahar are on the bottom strata of the caste system with the lowest literacy rate and per capita income. Less than one percent of their 2.3 million population in Bihar is literate and 98% are landless.
Mr Prakash says his proposals to popularise rat meat eating are intended to uplift their social-economic condition.
“There are twin advantages of this proposal. First, we can save about half of our food grain stocks by catching and eating rats and secondly we can improve the economic condition of the Musahar community,” he told the BBC.
He said that rat meat is not only a delicacy but a protein-enriched food, widely popular in Thailand and France.
Somehow, I think economic circumstances have more to do with “tradition” than does choice.
“First, we can save about half of our food grain stocks by catching and eating rats…”
Or maybe using rat traps?
This whole Hindu caste system has got to go.
Those bandicoots are making my mouth water. Scrumpdillyicious!!
well… what meat we eat and what we detest is mostly cultural. Guineapigs are pets here and food someplace else, bunnies are even food to some of us and pets to others in the same region. Dogs are usually not regarded as food by westerners.
Rats are meat, and if you insist in eating meat (which I don’t) it really doesn’t make a great big difference what species it came from as long as the animal died more or less healthy and is not on of the last of it’s kind.
I don’t see why eating rats should be any worse than eating songbirds, which was usual practice in Italy until not too long ago.
pj
Spark up the BBQ !
Makes perfect sense to me… readily available food is readily available food…
as for “This whole Hindu caste system has got to go” is it really that different than anywhere else the world? I’d love to see a viable meritocracy emerge where talent is based on your skill and not your birth, but I have yet to see this work anywhere….
I meant to say “where you wealth is based on talent and skill” but now that I think about it, maybe that wouldn’t be such a good idea as I’d probably end up at the bottom of the pecking order 😀
MMmm. I have squirrel and squab available in the garden. Hmmmmm
From Soul of the Tiger: Searching for Nature’s Answers in Southeast Asia by Jeffrey A. McNeely, Paul Spencer
A Filipino entrepreneur tried, unsuccessfully, to market canned rat meat under the catchy brand name STAR, “RATS” spelled backward.
#7 Do you know why pigeon is called squab?
That is the sound they make when you run over them in the parking lot.
Please !!! We don’t need pictures of cooked rats first thing in the AM !!! Have you no common sense ???
#9 Jimmy-D ~ Haven’t you ever had rattle snake eggs and rat for breakfast before. Ummm Ummm Good eats! Chase it down with a little raccoon urine.
Bandicoot rat? No Crash, don’t go.
What’s so strange?
Compare that to the menu at the Road Kill Cafe.
http://www.road-kill-cafe.com/roadkill.html
Ah. Clavell’s King Rat finally moves to the realm of non-fiction.
that was appalling, what’s for afters?
well there’s rat cake, rat pudding, rat sorbet, or strawberry tart.
STRAWBERY TART???
Well it’s got some rat in it….
Find out what the rats are eating. I bet it’s
edible by humans and more nutricious. Converting any grain/plant matiriel to meat on any animal is usualy a 10 to 1 loss.
#15 “Find out what the rats are eating. I bet it’s
edible by humans and more nutricious.”
Umm, it’s corn and the like. NOT more nutritious than meat. I guess if humans were herbivores it might work. Deer eat grass & leaves, why don’t you try it for a couple of months..
Ratkabobs! Mmmm. But, beggars can’t be choosers…
Well, it’s India. They aren’t allowed to eat the perfectly good cows!
But protein is protein, and a rat isn’t much different from a rabbit, which lots of Westerners seem to like.
Fortunately, I live in a well to do enough country and have enough income not to have to eat things I find icky. Not that all icky food is cheap…oysters, squid, parsnips, whatever they call that cat shit coffee…
I wonder if the “rats are a delicacy in France” thing got started out of necessity. If you’re from the Mel Brooks school of history, you’d know they were commonly sold to starving peasants on the streets of Paris during Louis XVI’s reign. Good for rat stew, rat soup, or the ever-popular ratatouille. 😉