Since the mid 80’s, I’ve heard that ostrich meat will be the meat of the future. Cheap to raise, low amount of fat, nice beefy taste and you can use the feathers to decorate hats and sell them to Puss-In-Boots. Be that as it may, my local Cub Foods has yet to stock a wide array of ostrich meat. In fact, they don’t have any.
Granted, I can live without ostrich meat. I’ve had it before and it’s yummy enough, but nothing to beat a 16oz slab of cow. But why did ostrich never take off (no pun intended)?
It seems that there was never even an effort to press it into the marketplace. The only places I’ve ever seen it, it’s sold as an “exotic” food and costs a lot more than it’s worth.
Was ostrich simply harder to raise than they had thought? More expensive? Couldn’t get the FDA approval? No market for Ostrich Helper?
Come to think of it, we were supposed to see emu farms in the near future as well. Obviously the ‘large flightless bird as meat’ market is widely untapped. Pity we’re fresh out of moas.
“I guess it is possible for one person to make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”
I can get an ostrich burger whenever at the East End Deli here on Sanibel. I had one once, and it was quite delicious. It would seem to be the meat of the future, wouldn’t it?
My wife and I eat Ostrich burgers and filets on a regular basis. I used to be able to find them at Jewel or Dominics, but they don’t seem to carry them anymore, probably due to lack of demand. We order them in bulk from a local Deli. You are correct that they are overpriced, compared to beef, but with 1/3 the fat and more protein, I’m willing to pay the price. I value my health over my bank account.
As to the reason that Ostrich never caught on with John Q. Public, my guess is that lack of availability/effective advertising, combined with peoples reluctance to try new things, have left the market for this product sluggish. Too bad. It’s really quite good.
Currently a breeding program is underway to bring them down to a useful size, say that of a turkey or chicken. At that point the Ostrich Framers of America feel there will be a bird in every pot.
OFA has this to say about their efforts “It takes a lot of years of selective breeding to get them down in size.” Former president of OFA said that early attempts at introducing chicken DNA failed. The geneticaly altered ostrich had a body the size of a large chicken and the neck of a regular ostrich. The bird couldn’t stand upright.
Currently a breeding program is underway to bring them down to a useful size, say that of a turkey or chicken. At that point the Ostrich Framers of America feel there will be a bird in every pot.
OFA has this to say about their efforts “It takes a lot of years of selective breeding to get them down in size.” Former president of OFA said that early attempts at introducing chicken DNA failed. The geneticaly altered ostrich had a body the size of a large chicken and the neck of a regular ostrich. The bird couldn’t stand upright.
Currently a breeding program is underway to bring them down to a useful size, say that of a turkey or chicken. At that point the Ostrich Framers of America feel there will be a bird in every pot.
OFA has this to say about their efforts “It takes a lot of years of selective breeding to get them down in size.” Former president of OFA said that early attempts at introducing chicken DNA failed. The geneticaly altered ostrich had a body the size of a large chicken and the neck of a regular ostrich. The bird couldn’t stand upright.
Anyhow a couple local dairy farmers decided to quit the cow business and went into emus and ostriches. There is probably four places within a ten mile radius of me that still have them though I don’t think they’re making any money doing it. They have regular jobs and this just breaks even or pays the real estate taxes. The impression I get is that it was just basically a good pyramid scheme. Convince people that this will be the meat of the future and that the general public will pay more for the meat then sell breeding pairs for exceedingly high prices to beginning entreprenuers. I believe that breeding pairs at one time were going for $5000. Now the individual birds are going for under $100 for meat. So the originators of the business got in then got out quick before the market price went to crap. Now the mid-level producers are taking a bath on their original investment. As an amusing aside a local emu escaped from a farm and ran loose all around Otsego County and the neighboring counties for a month or two before they finally caught it. It ranged up to 30-40 miles in a week and it took many attempts to catch it. When they finally caught it, noone would claim it as their bird. There is possibly 10 farms it could have come from but none of them stepped foward to claim it, kind of makes you wonder how much they’re worth doesn’t it?
There are emu farms throughout Missouri. Their meat is available in convenience stores and roadside souvenir stands as a novelty, usually ground up into “Emu Jerky” or otherwise. It’s delicious, but I don’t anticipate finding ground emu in my grocer’s meat case anytime soon.
There was an enormous backlash from the powerful earthworm lobby. Hey, if you’ve never been lashed by an earthworm, you just don’t know pain.
Seriously, though. Apart from the obvious joke about McDonald’s hamburgers (i.e. the Urban Legend), I’d guess that while earthworms might be chock-full of good stuff, there is a heck of a marketing problem. Similarly, insects are supposedly very good eatin’, but they haven’t caught on, either.
Marketing is a very important aspect to the success of any new food. I rather suspect that’s why we’ve never been able to buy gerbil cheese.
Funneefarmer, you beat me to it… the market structure will take a while to reach some kind of equilibrium, but that was the main reason it hadn’t all caught on, and was oversold and hyped up. (The appearance of emu meat, for example, is merely a horizontal expansion of the idea. Not that it’s any different, really; just kinda like Amway breaking into the Tupperware market.)
I wouldn’t be too sure about that being completely UL. While I don’t think McDonalds’ is doing it, a few overseas fast food joints definitely are. I personally know for a fact of the major portion of the vermiculture output in one country going to American style fastfood joints there. Might go to locally held franchises of “internationally recognizable brands” as well as local imitations… but it isn’t likely a problem in the US.
Threads exist in the About This Message Board forum specifically for testing your graphics coding. You have to stay after school and write 100 times “I will not sully my holiest place, GQ, with test posts.”
Nickrz
GQ Mod
(And don’t even think about making that pig yer sig).
There’s a great little cafe in downtown Salt Lake that serves (or served, it’s been a couple years) local (well, Utah-raised) ostrich sausage. They taste like, well, sausages.
But I’ve never seen ostrich for sale in grocery stores.
Ostrich probably suffered from America’s narrow-mindedness on meat. Most American’s will only eat beef, chicken, and pork (and turkey once a year). If you can’t convince people to eat lamb, duck, or rabbit, how are you going to convince them to eat ostrich?
