SC - Dressing out animals including cats (was Aoife and bear, etc.)

[Philippa Alderton]

When you dress out any animal, you can figure you get about 50% of live
weight in edible portions. Obviously, this will vary, depending on the
species of animal, how fat it is and whether or not you WANT the fat,, the
organs, and so forth, the age/stage of life, whether or not the animal has
been bred as a meat animal, etc. There is a particular breed of beef
cattle, called the Murray Grey which is a sport developed from the Black
Angus, which is advertised as being about 5 % more edible than average
breeds such as white-face (Herefords) or standard black Angus, but never
having dressed one out, I couldn't say. Use 50% as a rough guesstimate, and
you won't go far wrong- if you get more, it's a bonus, if less, either your
butchering techniques leave something to be desired, or you're throwing
away a lot of stuff which is edible, but you may not consider edible.

It is still law in some localities that a rabbit must have one foot left on
the carcass so that people KNOW they're getting rabbit and not cat, as the
cleaned carcasses are very similar. 

Was reading a newsline from Viet Nam the other week. It seems that in
Saigon, the government has started sanctions against restaurants which
serve cat, and is giving bonuses to restaurants which serve rat, because
there were so many cats being eaten that the rat population had gotten out
of control.

By the way, for all the teasing I/we have done about eating cats, many of
us on the List, Ras included, keep them as valued members of our household-
or perhaps, they keep us. If you'd like a smile, go to:

http://www.andreas.com/catman.html

and enjoy ;-)

Phlip
Caer Frig
Barony of the Middle Marches
Middle Kingdom

Southeastern Ohio

Phlip at bright.net

Never a horse that cain't be rode,
And never a rider that cain't be throwed.
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