Would you eat dugong???

[Bray]

I thought I'd pose this question, to see how far people are willing to take their bush-tucker experimentation, ethically.

I have had the opportunity to try dugong meat, provided at a cultural dinner by a Torres Strait Island lady. As an ecologist, I didn't feel entierly right about eating it, but as an experimenter I couldn't go past it. It was like very tough pork, a little oiler but not as much flavour. The blubber is thick and gristly and pretty-much inedible (I was disappointed there, since I thought it might be like pork cracking!). In short, certainly a palatable meat, but I didn't think it was wonderful enough to make me want to eat it again.

[Bluetongue]

Hi Bray,
Interesting question! I'd have to answer 'depends on context' for the poll. Same reasons as you I ate croc and emu when offered by indigenous people at the Mullum Mullum festival, but stick to roo at the butcher shop. Even feel uneasy about that at the mo.

[Rimbaud]

bray are they pandanus seeds in your icon?

[Rimbaud]

i wouldn't eat it because i have an aversion to eating animals in the higher-intelligence bracket

same reason i avoid pig meat... they are smart.

This is entirely separate to arguments about their vulnerability or the effect that eating them might have on their ecosystem of course.

kangaroos... i have no problem with whatsoever! dugongs... i'll pass

that said, meat is part of the natural chain, and even human meat is entirely natural (indeed, even cannabilism seems to have been entirely natural among humans, in some cases, as well as other species)

i used to have big ethical problems with the 'food chain', meat eating etc (hence the delay in creating the appropriate category on this forum, actually), but now my problems with it are more emotional than ethical. Why is life so cruel? Well, because no one with a heart designed it, that's what i reckon anyway.

[Bray]

yep, that's pandanus.
I can see your point, and most people I've spoken to have the same aversion to eating cute/intelligent/social/endangered animals (pick your own combination). They way I ended up justifying eating it was that I knew the dugong hadn't been killed specifically for this meal. We were getting the left-overs (and there wasn't much!) that had been flown down from the TSI by the lady's parents. There is no way I'd be able to kill a dugong as a meat staple, or let one be killed for me, for all four of those reasons listed above.

(and of course, there's the legal implications, but that's another story altogether)

[clare_b74]

Yeah Bray, ideally there'd be a "maybe" choice in the poll!

Like you, and others, if there was no suggestion that if I wasn't sitting there, napkin around my neck, the dugong would still be alive and swimmin' I'd eat it, but not if there was something slightly less endangered around

I try not to make cuisine choices using a cuteness factor (plain silly really) or an intelligence factor (when you look long enough, all animals are pretty bloody intelligent), but would give great sway to endangered status and cultural appropriateness (dealing with legality issues).

Then again, actual taste comes into it (or is it a reverse cuteness factor?) - I doubt I'd try the previously mentioned sleepy lizard!

[eataust]

I'll eat anything as long as I know it's not endangered. I'd like to restrict my eating to foodstuffs that I know were ethically and organically grown and harvested, but I'd be a. hungry and b. broke by now.

When on my own property, I'll be in a better position to follow my druthers on foodstuffs.

I agree with Jackie French and other permaculturalists when they say "Eating meat that is part of a wholistic food cycle is more ethically and ecologically sound than only eating plants which are forced to grow in an ecology that can't cope with it". One chook in my backyard gives me all the nutrients that many more square feet of rice, soy, and/or nuts would give.

So that's my ethical stance. Luckily for me, it incorporates the fact that I like meat :)

[Bones6]

I've never tried dugong but would probably give it a go (my father-in-law is from far north QLD and grew up with Torres Strait islanders so maybe one day).

I have twice had echidna (tjilka) before wich is very fatty, on both occasions it was roadkill quickly snapped up by the local anagu as a delicacy. Goanna is something I would like to try as it is very highly thought of by Aboriginal people.

I used to suffer from the cuteness factor also, especially when I saw young wombats being prepared but that is the reality of life and I felt that by not accepting that I would offend my hosts (in fact they wouldn't have minded in the least) but more importantly I would have sold myself short in experiencing what life is like outside of the comfortable western system. Incedentally wombat is the best tasting meat I've ever had and it is culled by farmers and left to rot, not that I'm advocating harvesting wombats its just a waste thats all.

As for eating animals of higher intellingence is it better to kill a chicken or fish for a single meal or a pig for many meals? I don't know.

Also I've debated the pros and cons of these things with many vegetarian and vegan friends over the years and the best argument I heard was from a mate who had eaten meat but then took a job in a meatworks one uni holidays where he was assigned the task of slaughtering lambs basically he challenged me to do that job for six weeks and still eat meat, I didn't except the challenge but he's probably right.

[hagakure]

interesting discussion

i probably wouldnt.

if dugongs were plentiful, perhaps
if there was no other food available and it was a matter of survival, yes

but look at em. they are these big gentle bastards that just float around munching on weeds.

okay im being ruled by emotions but im perfectly cool with that.

[darcy]

i'd have to agree with hagakure, i have plenty of other food so i have no need to eat a 'mermaid'. In the right context, say a survival situation or a indigenous feast or where dugongs were plentiful and overeating seagrass, i'd give it a go

[Bluetongue]

Hey Bones, I agree about the slaughterhouses being aversion therapy. Even the footage on the odd tv program is enough for me. My partner used to bike around inner Melbourne as a kid and watch the abbatoir guys at work... I know, wierd or what

Don't even get me started on salmon (after David Suzuki's address to the Press club) and tuna (tv footage). That's why I'm a bit iffy about even the roo that we have occasionally - I still haven't asked the butcher for the gory details of where and how they are 'dispatched'.

Aaaagh. Makes me glad that my daughter cooked vegetarian tonight

[eataust]

Well, I'll have to learn how to shoot on my property ... so with any luck I'll be able to guarantee my own roo ... eventually ...

[monero]

If I was at an Aboriginal or Torres straight village or someone's house and they offered Dugong I wouldnt refuse to eat it, that would be just rude to me. I wouldnt hunt Dugong.

As for eating smart animals, if i am smart enough to catch them, then I am smarter then they are. Prolly wouldnt eat Flipper though, or a dog, too emotionally attached. I cant eat Magpies or Blue Wrens cos they were given to me as totems.

I could probably eat flipper or a puppy dog if i was hungry to the point of starving. I'd eat cat no problems but they apparently taste awful.

Stu

[Steve]

i ate dugong at a multicultural food festival held at james cook uni last year and i must agree with the fatty pork description. as for the ethics, i'd had a few beers, someone said something about a relative from t.i. having caught it, and before i knew it i was eating an endangered species. the issue of indigenous hunting is obviously a complex one, but if offered again i would probably make the same choice, though i wouldn't be comfortable hunting for this meat myself in light of the alternatives.

on a recent trip to vanuatu i was offered coconut crab (Birgus latro) and fruit bat. both of these species are endangered (by some measure of definition, if not officially). i was unsure if i should eat these animals, but as my hosts didn't seem to be preparing these meals just because i was in their villages, i felt it approriate to take part in their interaction with the natural environment. though perhaps the prospect that my alternative was plain rice contributed.

[Bray]

Hey Steve, I think we were at the very same dinner for that dugong! It was at Rotary House International, right?