The Pittsburgh Post Gazette reports that there’s a rabbit shortage afflicting the US restaurant industry – the demand has grown in recent years, and breeders are having trouble coming up with enough of them to satisfy chefs.
However, it isn’t that rabbits aren’t doing their part. As is well known, rabbits are pretty good about reproducing, and it takes only 11 weeks to get them from birth to broiler. There just aren’t enough producers, and the US has been forced to import a million pounds of rabbit meat from foreign countries, mostly from China.
The Post Gazette notes that historically, rabbit meat used to be highly popular; during World War II, the government actively tried to get people to eat rabbit because there was a shortage of meat. But as those shortages faded, so did demand for rabbit, especially because children were appalled by the possibility that they might be eating Bugs Bunny or the Easter Bunny.
Today, there are good reasons to be eating rabbit, including for health reasons - it is low in fat and cholesterol and high in protein.
However, it isn’t that rabbits aren’t doing their part. As is well known, rabbits are pretty good about reproducing, and it takes only 11 weeks to get them from birth to broiler. There just aren’t enough producers, and the US has been forced to import a million pounds of rabbit meat from foreign countries, mostly from China.
The Post Gazette notes that historically, rabbit meat used to be highly popular; during World War II, the government actively tried to get people to eat rabbit because there was a shortage of meat. But as those shortages faded, so did demand for rabbit, especially because children were appalled by the possibility that they might be eating Bugs Bunny or the Easter Bunny.
Today, there are good reasons to be eating rabbit, including for health reasons - it is low in fat and cholesterol and high in protein.
- KC's View:
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Which means, we suppose, that New York City will be issuing a memo asking every restaurant in the city to put rabbit on its menu.
McBunny Burgers.
Yummm…
