# Why don’t we eat rabbits? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [October 23, 2015, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-we-eat-rabbits/735522 "2015-10-23T10:48:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-we-eat-rabbits/735522/21 "2015-10-23T15:44:30Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Yeah, that just kills the joke doesn’t it :rolleyes: The joke is funny only if you are 1. Five years old b. Ignorant of the differences between the animals ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-we-eat-rabbits/735522/22 "2015-10-23T16:11:37Z")
> [@Scumpup](#): > > The joke is funny only if you are > > 1. Five years old > b. Ignorant of the differences between the animals 1. Yes b. Everybody on earth who cares is a member of the SDMB ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-we-eat-rabbits/735522/23 "2015-10-23T16:13:21Z")
1. Childish humor is no crime here at the SDMB. 2. However, we do have a habit of ruining the joke, just in case someone who reads it needs to have his or her ignorance fought. So, both the joke and the ruining of the joke are standard operating procedure here. ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-we-eat-rabbits/735522/24 "2015-10-23T16:35:29Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > 1. Childish humor is no crime here at the SDMB. > 2. However, we do have a habit of ruining the joke, just in case someone who reads it needs to have his or her ignorance fought. > > So, both the joke and the ruining of the joke are standard operating procedure here. I like the symmetry. ---
**Author:** ![admin\_mostlycocoa.com](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/edb3f5/32.png) [@admin\_mostlycocoa.com](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/admin_mostlycocoa.com)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-we-eat-rabbits/735522/25 "2015-10-23T16:37:50Z")
I’ve eaten rabbit and it does not taste like chicken. It has a gamey flavor and is very bony. You can still find them hanging in some butcher shops in cities such as the North End of Boston. ---
**Author:** ![qazwart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/5fc32e/32.png) [@qazwart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/qazwart)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-we-eat-rabbits/735522/26 "2015-10-23T16:39:59Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > I saw a rabbit kiosk at a county fair one time, and the clerk was asking each customer, “Pets or meat?” In the movie _Roger and Me_, Micheal Moore came across a woman who was selling rabbits for food. She was later prohibited from selling rabbits for food, and resorted to selling rabbits to people to feed to their pet pythons. Maybe that clerk at the kiosk should have been asking their customers “Pets or Food or Pet food?” ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-we-eat-rabbits/735522/27 "2015-10-23T16:44:42Z")
> [@admin\_mostlycocoa.com](#): > > I’ve eaten rabbit and it does not taste like chicken. It has a gamey flavor and is very bony. You can still find them hanging in some butcher shops in cities such as the North End of Boston. Was that a wild rabbit or one raised for food? I’ve never had wild rabbit but someone above mentioned a gamey flavor, which makes sense for wild animals who are eating anything they can find. ---
**Author:** ![qazwart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/5fc32e/32.png) [@qazwart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/qazwart)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-we-eat-rabbits/735522/28 "2015-10-23T16:59:54Z")
There have been many attempts to widen our meat sources. Horses were once sold in New Jersey for food, and during the tough times of the 1970s with rampant inflation, many people took to eating horses in order to save money. Horse meat was illegal in most states, and never took off. Once hyperinflation was licked, and factory farming started taking off, horse meat became less popular, and it became illegal under federal law to sell it for human consumption. [Emus](http://sugarmapleemu.com) and [Ostriches](http://www.blackwing.com/product_shop.php?pcnm=ostrich) were once touted as the next meat. Their meat is red in color like beef and apparently tastes like beef, but has much lower fat content. In the late 1980s and 1990s, thousands of people opened emu and ostrich farms in order to be on the ground floor of this great new opportunity. Not much happened. In many countries, dogs are eaten, but eating Lassie has such a negative taint that the Chinese government prohibited the selling of dog meat during the Olympics. Like rabbit, it’s looked down upon as the meat for the poor. [Hippos](http://www.wired.com/2013/12/hippopotamus-ranching/) were once thought to be the perfect solution to the _meat shortage_ that took place around the early years of the 20th century. Hippos could live in swamps and bayous where cattle couldn’t tread, and certainly could provide a lot of meat. What could go wrong? Not that long ago, buffalo was popular. It was considered to be more eco-friendly than cows. I was even able to buy kosher buffalo meat. It was a bit stronger in flavor than cattle, but tasty. It’s no longer around. In the early days, we use to eat a lot more meat sources, but that was before we created a system of farm-to-food production. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-we-eat-rabbits/735522/29 "2015-10-23T17:16:03Z")
The only thing that’s going to widen the meat sources of the average American is something catastrophic like virtually every cow/steer dropping dead suddenly. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-we-eat-rabbits/735522/30 "2015-10-23T17:18:41Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > The only thing that’s going to widen the meat sources of the average American is something catastrophic like virtually every cow/steer dropping dead suddenly. Chickens and pigs too. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-we-eat-rabbits/735522/31 "2015-10-23T17:26:44Z")
The physical objections to rabbit as food seem to be: – Small size and bony. – Too low fat content. – Rabbits are fragile and die easily and not well suited to industrial-scale production. But chickens, turkeys, and many other farmed animals (and plant crops too, like tomatoes) have been carefully bred for umpty-ump generations to improve them for better food production. So why would that not be a viable strategy for raising rabbits too? They could be bred (and fed) to be [bigger](http://cryptomundo.com/wp-content/jack2.jpg), fatter, and sturdier. It would take some long-term investment, no doubt, requiring many generations of farming. But in the meantime, are rabbits so much worse than fish? Fish are smallish (I’m thinking of fish like trout and salmon, as opposed to big ones like halibut), lean, and bony. Yet we eat lots of those. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-we-eat-rabbits/735522/32 "2015-10-23T17:29:38Z")
We should also be eating tribbles. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-we-eat-rabbits/735522/33 "2015-10-23T17:34:40Z")
> [@qazwart](#): > > [Emus](http://sugarmapleemu.com) and [Ostriches](http://www.blackwing.com/product_shop.php?pcnm=ostrich) were once touted as the next meat. Their meat is red in color like beef and apparently tastes like beef, but has much lower fat content. In the late 1980s and 1990s, thousands of people opened emu and ostrich farms in order to be on the ground floor of this great new opportunity. Not much happened. I’ve eat both emu and ostrich at high end restaurants in the US. and ostrich at a high end restaurant in the Netherlands. Not widely popular, but available. And very good. I’ve eaten rabbit in a fancy Italian restaurant in the North End of San Francisco, and also in Burlington Vermont. And I’ve had goat in Mexico. So, oddly these meats are not sold as cheap meat, but as high end exotic meats in good restaurants. In my experience anyhow. ---
**Author:** ![Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blue_blistering_barnacle/32/3386_2.png) [@Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blue_Blistering_Barnacle)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-we-eat-rabbits/735522/34 "2015-10-23T17:37:32Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > No, people just don’t like to find a hare in their soup. > [@Scumpup](#): > > You would have to boil a hare to find it in the soup. [Hare and rabbit are not interchangeable terms.](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/12/141219-rabbits-hares-animals-science-mating-courtship/) > [@Acsenray](#): > > 1. Childish humor is no crime here at the SDMB. > 2. However, we do have a habit of ruining the joke, just in case someone who reads it needs to have his or her ignorance fought. > > So, both the joke and the ruining of the joke are standard operating procedure here. They are absolutely equivalent, and I have a cite: > **[hare today bugs bunny - Bing](http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=hare%2Btoday%2Bbugs%2Bbunny&id=35AF3EBD0F1C31926936D0541F6F975ABA81A382&FORM=IQFRBA)** > > Intelligent search from Bing makes it easier to quickly find what you’re looking for and rewards you. ---
**Author:** ![Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blue_blistering_barnacle/32/3386_2.png) [@Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blue_Blistering_Barnacle)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-we-eat-rabbits/735522/35 "2015-10-23T18:13:34Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > We should also be eating tribbles. Too cute. Maybe we could crossbreed them with crickets? ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-we-eat-rabbits/735522/36 "2015-10-23T18:43:08Z")
Cecil’s column under discussion: [Why don’t we eat rabbits? - The Straight Dope](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3259/why-don-t-we-eat-rabbits) A space is needed between the bolded words here: “Also during the Depression, a feed farmer named Jesse Jewell figured out how to vertically integrate the production of chicken, theretofore a decentralized **affairand** , contra the bunny…” > [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > I saw a rabbit kiosk at a county fair one time, and the clerk was asking each customer, “Pets or meat?” > [@qazwart](#): > > In the movie _Roger and Me_, Micheal Moore came across a woman who was selling rabbits for food. She was later prohibited from selling rabbits for food, and resorted to selling rabbits to people to feed to their pet pythons… _Pets or Meat_ was actually the title of Moore’s short followup to _Roger and Me_: [Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pets_or_Meat). ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-we-eat-rabbits/735522/37 "2015-10-23T19:23:19Z")
Rabbit stew is delicious. ---
**Author:** ![squidfood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a87d85/32.png) [@squidfood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squidfood)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-we-eat-rabbits/735522/38 "2015-10-23T19:58:41Z")
Of course I don’t eat rabbit. It’s duck season, you know. ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-we-eat-rabbits/735522/39 "2015-10-23T20:08:43Z")
“Given our need for more sustainable sources of protein, though, consumers might someday have to make a choice: bugs or bunny?” Or we could just tell the rabble rousers to fuck off and keep eating cows. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-we-eat-rabbits/735522/40 "2015-10-23T21:43:57Z")
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe humans can digest vegetable protein just fine … no need to eat animals at all. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-we-eat-rabbits/735522.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-don-t-we-eat-rabbits/735522.md?page=3)