An introduction to eating Road kill – is it acceptable and/or safe to eat?
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To be brutally honest, it rather depends on whether you think you can stomach it. A lot of people are put off simply by the thought of having to peel their meaty treats. Gutting them can be even more off-putting. But to be honest, the only difference between a pheasant from a supermarket and one from the side of the road is really only the amount of broken bones it will have.
I recommend that you don’t go near roadkill in this state, although I suspect that it will be so finely blended you might be able to use it as the base for a thick soup or possibly baby food.
If you are planning to attempt a road-kill feast, the only recommendations I would make are that you steer well clear of Badger and Fox and be very wary of Rabbit. You can eat rabbit, but really only if you actually see it killed, as it is essential that bunny is paunched (gutted) as soon as possible after they are killed. This is particularly important as they can carry the disease Tularaemia, which is listed by the American Centre for Disease Control as a possible
bio-terrorism agent! I guess you don’t want too much of that.
You may have heard that it is illegal to pick up a game bird that you have run-over yourself, but OK if someone else has killed it. Amazingly this is not an urban myth, but an actual rule that was imposed to prevent people from driving through estates where pheasant is bred and taking home enough fresh game to feed a family of four.
I feel that if you stick to squirrel and game birds that are reasonably intact, you won’t go far wrong. A good gauge of whether road-kill is still fit to eat is the creature’s eyes. If you can get to it before crows and other carrion have had away with it’s eyes, I reckon it’s worth a punt! You can of course just cheat and buy the ingredients for these recipes, no one will know if you throw away the packaging before anyone sees it.
More recipes to follow shortly... come back soon
Road-Kill - is it acceptable?
