Hooray for Government – keeping the homeless fed and safe

Louisiana’s State Health Department forced a homeless shelter to destroy $8,000 worth of deer meat because it was donated from a hunter organization.

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“We didn’t find anything wrong with it,” Rev. Henry Martin told KTBS. “It was processed correctly, it was packaged correctly.”

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“They threw it in the dumpster and poured Clorox on it,” Martin told KTBS. “Not only are we losing out and it’s costing us money, the people that are hungry aren’t going to get as quality of food, the hunter that’s given his meat in good faith is losing out.”

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“While we applaud the good intentions of the hunters who donated this meat, we must protect the people who eat at Rescue Mission, and we cannot allow a potentially serious health threat to endanger the public,” the Health Department stated.

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1600# of venison.

Accounts vary, but it seems a “serving of meat” is considered to be 3oz. So that’s 8533 servings that were destroyed.

Let that sink in for a moment.

More than 8000 servings of food.

If you divided that by 3 meals a day, that’s 2844 days.

Can you see how many people who meat could have fed?

Meat is expensive. And hell, venison is lean and high quality protein. We complain about the poor food choices that people make, the poor food choices available to people. And when it comes to charity food donations, people aren’t always going to be donating organic canned goods from Whole Foods, y’know? But here you’re getting high-quality, free-range protein… and you’re destroying it.

Under the guise of “protecting people”?

What about the hunters or other folk that would have otherwise eaten the meat? Why aren’t they being protected? Why is their consumption of the meat OK? If the meat is unsafe to eat, it’s unsafe to eat — period; thus no one should be eating it. But that doesn’t seem to be the case, does it?

None of this makes sense.

You’re not helping.