sorry guys that i have not shown up earlier............i was quite busy and travelled a bit.
now i must bother you with a rather nasty and devasting message i got from south africa's chris mercer's canned lion campaign and i ask you to take action:

A restaurant in Tampa Florida (spoto's the steak joint, dunedin, fl), is proudly offering lion meat from South Africa to attract gluttonous gormets. Under a heading which gushes “A Taste of Untamed Delights” a food journalist from the local newspaper writes:

“the lion is farm raised in South Africa and processed in Colorado….the meat was less tender than the others and came with part of the bone, making it difficult to cut. The taste is difficult to describe, sort of a cross between pork chops and ribs.”

The article focuses on the taste of the dish, and makes no mention of any other relevant considerations. Such as when the patrons of this Tampa restaurant order lion meat they are supporting one of the most vicious and destructive industries in the world. Such as their money goes back along the commercial food chain until it reaches the canned lion breeder in South Africa, enriching him and encouraging him to continue his grisly trade. Such as that South Africa is the world capital of canned lion breeding and hunting; that captive predators are reared under cruel conditions and then shot for sport, often with bow and arrow; that packs of dogs are often used to tree a tame hand reared lion or lioness so that bow hunters can have fun shooting arrows into their helpless victim.

Is this an industry which Florida restaurant-goers would wish to support?

To focus on the taste of the dish under these circumstance is rather like the sick old joke: “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the performance”

Treating lions as alternative livestock like this is transparently cruel. Unlike cattle and sheep, who are mostly raised on the open range and have some natural contentment before they are penned, fattened and slaughtered, lions are predators and therefore bred in enclosures. Should lions be imprisoned like battery chickens?

It is not natural and perhaps even unhealthy to eat the flesh of predators. There must be good reasons why predators do not eat other predators. Lions do not eat other lions even if they fight and kill each other and we human predators refrain from cannibalism.

As for the ethics involved, just look how far society has evolved. Two thousand years ago we used to throw Christians to the lions. Now we are so civilised that we throw lions to the Christians.

Chris Mercer

Campaign Against Canned Hunting

South Africa

www.cannedlion.co.za

further links for you in order to gather information and send protest mails:

http://www.tampabay.com/features/food/general/article661291.ece

http://www.bigcatrescue.org/video/00210.htm
here you find further email for protesting

Pippa:

Thanks for posting this. I'll email the US Fish and Wildlife as well as the Florida Conservation Commission today.

This is totally absurd !!

The feedback on the article on the tampabay website says it all.

There is only one part where I disagree with Chris Mercer's comment:

It is not natural and perhaps even unhealthy to eat the flesh of predators. There must be good reasons why predators do not eat other predators. Lions do not eat other lions even if they fight and kill each other and we human predators refrain from cannibalism.

We humans, but also many animals, happily eat predators. Pigs eat meat, many nations happily eat crocodile, snakes and monkeys, others eat wild boar and bears, and when you look at sea-food, we all happily eat salmon, trout, octopus, lobster, swardfish, shark, monkfish (German: Seeteufel, Spain: Rape, Italy: Coda di Rospo, France: la lotte or la baudroie, Japan: Ankou, etc.) and heaps more.

Sometimes I think, rather than trying to convince the world not to eat anything from the endless list of animals threatened of extinction, we should probably start eating each other, at least nature would benefit. There is really not much left for us to eat, not even vegetables

The land we live on and feed from is either burning to ashes or flooding and if the catastrophe is bigger than the previous one, we watch it on tv until dinner is ready.

On tampabay someone called "kim" said the right thing: "I personally think the idea of eating any of these animals is outragous. However, go to other countries and ask them about eating cows, pigs, chicken and they probably think the same. Its a free country and as long as people pay for it, they will serve it."

So? Don't go there !!!

P.S. Nice to have you online again, pippa

I personally do not have a problem with eating lion. I do not think I would actually eat it though.

As with world farming it is the cruelty I object to!

For me the problem with canned hunting is the forced rearing of the animals & as this is a cheaper form of hunting the skill of the executor is suspect. I have witnessed canned hunting video's where six to seven shots have been used & the poor animal is still not despatched.

We have had skilled huntsmen on the forum who I'm sure are abhorrent of the lack of skill & concern of the canned industry.

Living in a rural community the livestock accepts & trusts the farmer as in canned lion breeding. It is when that "Produce" is kept in inhumane conditions & killed inhumanely that I object.

How often do you think about the despatch & rearing conditions of the "Sterile" meat bought at the super market?

Vegetarian? Your as guilty as the meat eaters when it comes to animal cruelty. Where is the source of the leather you wear or what happens to the calves from a dairy herd?

Carsten - now you've got me going!! I'll probably start a war here, but perhaps it needs to be said.

First of all, you and Nico need another quick trip to Kenya to see for yourselves. There are far fewer lions there than there were 7 years ago. The indigenous people consider them "vermin" are and killing them off for various reasons. It won't be long before they too are endangered. They need to be protected not only in Kenya but all over Africa.

If we, most of whom live in more developed and better educated countries, don't start setting a better example, how do you expect the poor, uneducated African to understand why his wildlife needs to be protected? I am told that many years ago Kenyans only ate ugali, milk and some veggies - never ate meat.
Now that they see everyone else in the world eating meat they think it is the thing to do. Laws need to be passed, and yes, we can say no to going to such places. However, importation of wildlife for such purposes is insane.

The canned/bred lion business, whether for sport hunting or as a food source, is truly despicable. Yes, many of us wear leather shoes and eat meat - but most of the animals were free living and had a fairly decent life before slaughter. The canned lions have been prisoners all their lives and haven't known what freedom is. And by buying their products, we are just encouraging further bad behavior on the part of individuals and their governments who don't give a damn about their wildlife.

Please think about it again!

Hehe, knew I will provoke reactions, good

Jan, you misunderstood me - or better - missed my very first line.

I fully agree with you that this is disgusting BECAUSE we should know better. We can not cry when we see wildlife documentaries in which we learn that lions are getting closer and closer to extinction and on the other hand go to such a restaurant to get a new thrill. If we are so dumb that we do not realize what effect such a dinner has, we haven't learned anything since we were cavemen. Neither can we expect Africans to respect and protect their wildlife if we go and eat it.

BUT,
I totally disagree with you when it comes to the animals WE consume. I think you should revise your picture of how our cattle grows up. Some animals can not (yet) be held in large numbers in stables like ostrich, deer, wild-boar which is why their meat has such a distinctive taste, all other animals grow up in massive stables where they are kept in utterly most limited boxes. Yes, you find the odd cow on the gras because it is cheaper in the summer, but they all get their "power-food" instead of fresh gras. Have you ever seen a pig outside? How many chickens and eggs are consumed every day including all the processed food that contains eggs and how many chicken do you see outside? All in little cages.

On top of that these animals are stuffed with antibiotics and tranquilizers so that they can handle the circumstances. Of course you later find them in the meat we eat.

So, my point was that BESIDES what we are doing to the lions in this case, we don't treat other animals much better. The only difference I see is, that these companies first invite hunters to pay big money to "hunt" a locked-up animal that is used to the presence of humans and then they sell the meat to restaurants. They must be making big money

That Africans did not eat meat in the past seems a myth to me. The opposite seems more realistic to me. Bushmen eat just about everything that crawls. The savanna and dense bush is not a place to be choosy when searching for food. I don't think that they needed a white man to explain to them that animals can be eaten.