More Wacky Game Meats: Raccoon

The popular New York Times article on the rise of squirrel meat consumption in Britain has brought out the best in many local reporters. Now reporter Lee Hill Kavanaugh of The Kansas City Star brings us an article with the unbeatable title, Raccoon: It's what's for dinner.

Raccoon meat is another delicacy for which I believe the polite term is "rural." Raccoon hunting has a long and storied tradition in rural America. An entire sub-section of the AKC's Working class of dogs has been bred specifically to hunt raccoons. According to the article, raccoon meat is popular, delicious, and affordable. Raccoon meat sells for $3 to $7 per raccoon in Kansas. An average adult raccoon weighs 15 pounds, and its meat will feed between four and five adults.

The high cost of meat is an underlying current in articles such as this one. Grocery store meat prices have soared over the last year. Many people simply cannot afford to feed their family "traditional" meat such as pork, beef, and chicken on a regular basis.

Coupled with the economic crisis, Americans are becoming more sensitive to the ecological impact of meat. With books like Fast Food Nation exposing the ecological and ethical impact of raising beef for slaughter, many consumers are turning to alternate sources. Following just behind the rise of grass fed beef and free range chicken, we can expect to see a rise in the consumption of wild game. After all, deer are the ultimate low impact animal. And as suburbia grows, providing favored deer habitat along with a sharp reduction in a deer's natural predators, deer have reached plague status in many parts of the country.

It's not surprising that people are turning to even more "creative" wild game. Raccoons are plentiful in America, in both urban and rural settings. Raccoons, Nature's adaptable generalist, are plentiful in many cities, where they thrive on a diet of garbage. As with squirrel meat, consumers are cautioned against eating urban raccoons. Their urban living conditions tend to foster a higher disease and parasite load.

Raccoons living in the wild are a different story. Raccoons are omnivorous, and will eat almost anything. A wild raccoon eats both plant life, insects, and other small animals such as fish and frogs. Raccoons are able to increase their reproduction to a certain extent to cope with high mortality rates. This can sometimes mean that the more raccoons are hunted in an area, the higher the number of raccoons. Many people hunt raccoons professionally for their fur, and the leftover meat would otherwise be wasted.

Like any game, raccoons carry a risk of disease, including tetanus and rabies. And also like other game meats, raccoon meat tends to be leaner and possibly more nutritious than a meat like feedlot beef. According to calorie-counter.net, roasted raccoon meat has 255 calories and 14.5 grams of fat per 100 grams. That's pretty good compared to the equivalent amount of roasted chicken drumstick (310 calories) or rib eye steak (247 calories and 14.74 grams of fat).