Save the Planet, Eat an Alien

A Diet for an Invaded Planet: Invasive Species

There’s a new shift in the politics of food, not quite a movement yet, more of an eco-culinary frisson. But it may have staying power; the signs and portents are there. Vegans, freegans, locavores — meet the invasivores.

Some divers in the Florida Keys recently held a lionfish derby, the idea being to kill and eat lionfish, an invasive species. Local chefs cooperated by promoting the lionfish as a tasty entree. The idea drew editorial support from Andrew Revkin in a post on The Times’s Dot Earth blog in which he also mentioned an attempt by some fisheries biologists to rename the invading Asian carp “Kentucky tuna” to make it more appealing to diners. And the Utne Reader recently ran an article about Chicago chefs turning their attention to the same invasive fish...

If you can't beat 'em, eat em. 

Of course, we've been eating invasive species for a long time, and helping them invade so we could do so.  The list of animals that we have introduced to North America deliberately and accidentally is huge and growing.   Wild goats, cows, a variety of birds including pheasants, horses (at least some people eat them).  The Smithsonian Institution has a large laboratory group devoted to studying the many marine animals that have invaded the western hemisphere via ballast water and other means of transport.  In San Francisco Bay, most the the current species are thought to be invaders.  There even have been serious proposals to transplant a foreign species of oyster, Crassostrea ariakensis, to replace the moribund populations of Chesapeake Bay's native Crassostrea virginica.  They taste the same to me.

...The movement will, of course, need the support of cooks and eaters as well as hunters and environmentalists, but I see that happening already. Witness the request for a good python recipe on Chowhound. Among the comments, some downright disrespectful, was this, which I take to be a sign that Mr. Landers and Ms. Kesel are on the right track: “We usually cook alligator and snake in an étouffée.”

 I recall eating rattlesnake in my youth, and it was kind of like chicken on a fishy skeleton.  It would take a big one to replace a good steak. But I hear the Burmese pythons in Florida get pretty big.