From what I can gather…pythons meat is fairly innocuous (yeah, tastes like chicken but a bit “gamey” and more chewy. So probably not too bad.
What I really object to is promoting “farmed snakes” (which is what the article says). If someone wants to go clear out the Everglades of invasive snakes and sell the meat then go for it. But we certainly don’t need more being raised for food.
I tried guinea pig in SA. Did not like it. But I’ll try almost any food once, if prepared properly.
I wonder what they feed the snakes for us to eat them?
I’ve tried quite a few different meats, including rattlesnake. It wasn’t bad. It was mild, much like alligator and frog. I’d eat those again, though I don’t think I’d buy them to prepare. I prefer chicken.
Ostrich, reindeer/caribou, bison, rabbit, moose, and elk are pretty good and I’d eat them again too. I don’t love venison, but I’ll eat it.
The meats I’ve tried but wouldn’t eat again are beaver (yuck), bear, walrus, whale, and seal. I don’t like the flavor of any of them. And icelandic fermented shark is the most vile thing I’ve tasted.
I’ll handle non-venomous snakes without a problem, but writhing masses of serpents creep me out a bit. I’ve tried bugs but I’m weirded out by eating them even though the flavor is fine. I will never ever ever eat a spider. I’d give python a chance, for sure.
Snakes creep me out. But I’ll try to keep an open mind.
Per good points from @aheltzel, I am encouraged by some of the new farming / ranching methods being used. There were some interesting related segments in the Kiss the Ground documentary (Netflix) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uf8dF0agJEk
Now back to the Boo Hisssssss (or woo hoo) comments on snake meat.
I am in error - Beef is the second worst animal:
As for greenhouse gasses, methane production by burps is actually only a small contribution. It is the loss of open space that is converted to pasture, and yes, monoculture for the grass and forage that they eat. The greenhouse gasses come from the conversion of the land to pasture and forage, maintaining it as such, etc.
The manure isn’t used at the rate that it is produced, and also releases all sorts of pollutants, and it is washed from the fields and farms into streams, rivers, and lakes.
I had crocodile meat. People said it taste like chicken. To me, they lied. I won’t eat it again. I ate shark meat. Strong fishy taste that was not pleasant to me.
A friend fooled me to try meat jerky once. After I ate it, he told me it was snake meat. Truthfully, it was not bad, especially, when compared to the crocodile and shark meat.
But I don’t like snakes. A lot of people eat eels. I don’t, at least, not knowingly. They look a lot like snakes to me.
Shark or ray which isn’t very fresh can be fishy, and also can have a strong smell of ammonia.
BTW, many shark species are threatened or endangered, in part because they are overfished. So there is little reason to eat them anyway.
Eels are a huge delicacy both in Japan and in the Baltic countries in Europe. Smoked eel from the Baltic tastes really good, as does Japanese broiled eel (they also serve it as sushi). The Japanese eel does not look like anything but a small fish filet.
I had elvers ( a mass of baby eels) in Barcelona. No different than any mass of small fish, and not as good as baby silver fish (the fish, not the insect).
Eaten a lot of weird proteins and parts in my travels through the Far East and SE Asia. Snakes and other reptiles if properly prepared and seasoned can be delicious (chicken/birds evolved from reptiles). Also you can eat just about anything that is deep fried. I really appreciate what some cuisines can do with all parts of an animal. Maybe I am weird since I actually enjoyed scrapple growing up in the Mid Atlantic.
Oh no, not weird at all. Rapa scrapple is the best. I don’t care what part of the pig is in it.
So I love these graphs because they put really pretty lines in a box meant to show how bad one particular source is. This graph really doesn’t show anything usable. It doesn’t show methodology and most likely this graph is based on world the emissions and not just here in the United States. The US is light years ahead of most of the rest of world in our commitment to environmental sustainability. At the same time, the first several options are just grains that you can’t actually base an entire diet off of. With that, those grains contribute way more to a monoculture cropping system than beef or dairy. Most of them would use synthetic fertilizers and have a simple corn/beans rotation. Even chicken and pork will contribute to a monoculture system because they are monogastric animals and eat primarily corn and beans in their diet.
I am confused about your statements about how grazing land for beef is taking land from other sources. The vast majority of beef is grazed on land that is hilly, mountainous, dry or simply low quality. It is in places that you simply couldn’t grow another crop. In fact the grazing of the land actually helps to improve it. The grasses that cattle graze have long tap roots that actually help keep the soil in place. The grazing animals spread manure naturally and they also keep invasive weeds down.
As to monoculture crops on other land, those crops, especially grasses (and corn is a grass too) help improve the soil. The processes that we use today are amazing and only getting better. I have ground that has not been tilled in over 20 years. There is a growing crop (often times a grass like wheat or rye) growing on the ground 365 days a year. That growing crop does an amazing job pulling carbon dioxide from the air and sequestering it in the soil. In fact we are finding that on farms like mine, the carbon dioxide use of the crops exceeds what the animals release. I’m very excited to see new research in the field. At the same time, we are now using nitrogen fixing bacteria (similar to what legumes do) to even further reduce the amount of fertilizer needed. With drone technology, our next step will be to selectively spot spray weeds. As it is, with our cover crop system we have minimized the amount of weeds we have currently. If we weren’t growing crops, the land would grow houses or weeds or trees.
As to manure, 99% of farmers test their soils. We only apply specifically what the soil needs to meet crop growth. On our farm, my manure is fully used by our crops. There is no excess ever. By law, we have specific times when we can apply manure. This is to prevent any runoff and make sure all the nutrients end up in the soil. In fact, now we are actually injecting manure to eliminate all runoff and build the carbon matter of our soil even more. I like to say we are raising an amazing crop of earthworms that are caring for soil where we can’t see it.
You would be surprised to see that science that we use every day. From the specifically balanced rations our cows eat (based on scientifically testing each feed source) to the precise nutrients we add to our soils, nothing is wasted or lost ever. The same goes with the beef cattle. That graph doesn’t take into account all the end uses of the beef animal. It looks at meat alone. There is no other food source that can provide all the nutrients (protein, energy, vitamins and minerals) that beef can.
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