Among the 873 acres of gently sloping hills and fields of Devil’s Gulch Ranch in Marin County, California, owners Mark Pasternak and Myriam Kaplan-Pasternak grow a lot of grapes and raise a lot of rabbits. But not just any rabbits: Devil’s Gulch is one of the largest rabbit-meat producers in the state and sells to high-end restaurants like Chez Panisse, The French Laundry, and over a hundred others. At the height of their operation, the husband-and-wife pair had 12,000 rabbits, but these days, they keep about 2,000 and process 100 to 300 a week. They average, Mark estimates, about 10,000 a year. They are known for their high-quality meat, and given that Myriam specializes in rabbit veterinary care and nutrition, it’s safe to say they know how to raise bunnies.
The Pasternaks have their hands full with restaurant orders, so they won’t be supplying to Whole Foods—those rabbits come from two large, USDA-certified plants: De Bruin Brothers in Iowa, and another undisclosed processor in Missouri—but they applaud the company’s decision to start selling it.
Whole Foods’s decision was a response to demand, she says, but they're only going to end up creating more of it by putting it in their stores.
“I don’t think it would be a bad thing if it did normalize or get the American public to eat it more,” Mark says. Rabbit may not be very popular in this country, but if you’re going to eat meat, he points out, it’s one of the better options out there, nutritionally and environmentally speaking.
Rabbits are easy to raise and butcher in your backyard, they’re light on the environment—producing six pounds of rabbit meat requires the same amount of food and water as it takes to produce one pound of cow meat—and their meat is lean and low in cholesterol. The biggest drawback of rabbit meat has traditionally been the struggle to find it in stores, a point Modern Farmer writer Karin Pinchin makes in an article that ponders whether rabbit is the new "super meat." With Whole Foods taking on the role of supplier, this might not be a problem anymore.
But Margo DeMello, a professor of cultural anthropology at Canisius College, is convinced grocery stores shouldn't sell rabbit meat. DeMello, who is the president of the House Rabbit Society and a co-author of the book Stories Rabbits Tell, says it's a problem that stores carry the meat of “an animal that has been embraced as a pet in millions of American households.” Sure, Whole Foods’s decision was a response to demand, she says, but they're only going to end up creating more of it by putting it in their stores.
“Right now, it’s five regions, but eventually, if this pilot program is successful, it’s going to be all the regions,” she says. “And if that is successful, then the other stores are going to say, ‘Hey, we want to get in on the action!’” Whole Foods is a self-proclaimed industry leader in rabbit meat, and DeMello and her allies fear it won’t be long before factory-farmed rabbits start popping up everywhere.
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http://www.theatlantic.com/business/...r-meat/378757/
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Originally Posted by dannno
My brother gave me the hide of my favorite bunny like that was suppose to make me feel better.
I ate them but I never played with them again.
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