Duck etc

[phylisbide]

Here's a question that I can't find an answer to - why can you eat duck 'pink' and not chicken? Same question I suppose applies to beef and lamb and not pork. Any ideas?

Phylis

[Pierre ZFP]

I belive it's because pigs are genetically quite close to humans and so any pathogens could be easily passed if the meat is not fully cooked. Not so for cows or sheep but of course you still need good hygine to prevent e-coli for example.  As for chickens, they are unfortunately suseptable to carrying salmonella (unlike ducks) and so this needs to be killed by thorough cooking.

FWIW you would need to really cook a human before indulging in a bit of canabilism as many nasty things can be passed from human to human.  Also, you would need to cook any carnivore meat well to avoid nematodes (sp?) and would not be able to eat the liver due to poisioning by an excess of vitimin A.

Lunch anybody?

[phylisbide]

Would probably need a bigger oven dish - and haven't seen many recipe ideas...

[Pierre ZFP]

Just try a search for 'Long Pig' [+o(]

[Chancer]

That was what they called me (actually cochon long) in the "man bush small namba" tribal villages of  Malekula Vanuatu. The last official long pig feast was in 1968 but it still happens during the rare but sporadic bouts of tribal warfare, also in some of the Fidjian islands.

A ground or earth oven is the preferred method, the missionary in a cooking pot is a result of western imagination.

Editted

Certain tribes like the M.B.S.N.  actually have a legal dispensation allowing them to eat the flesh of recently departed elders of "high grade" what remains of the corpse is then placed on an elevated platform in a "taboo" clearing to be eaten by carrion and rongeurs, when the skeleton is picked and bleached clean it is given a christian burial.