Chickens killed by poisonous snake bites taken off menu
"Although nobody has been poisoned, this at the very least is an irregular way of slaughtering poultry," said a health official in China about a restaurant that has been forbidden from serving meals prepared from chickens killed by poisonous snake bites.
I couldn't bring myself to watch the video of the chef killing a chicken with a snake bite, but here it is if you are interested.
the latest
latest episodes
I think I'll skip the video as well.
I predict the comments here will fall into the following types:
A. "What's wrong with people? How can anyone do this? What's wrong with the people who buy it, let alone the people who do it and sell it?"
B. "If you're going to kill them anyway, who cares how?"
C. "I can't believe you liberal treehuggers are fussing about this."
D. "Why are you posting about this when children are dying in Iraq/the US is condoning torture/whatever you think is more important than this."
E. "Raising them in factories and slaughtering them traditionally is just as cruel."
F. "Blahblahblah free market blahblahblah government interference blahblahblah willing buyer, willing seller blahblahblah."
G. "This is not a Wonderful Thing."
H. Comments relating this somehow to something completely off-topic, like gn cntrl or brtn.
I. Comments agreeing with a previous commenter.
Just for fun, how about we comment by letter if that's all we have to say, and only submit text if we have something different to say? For type I, specify the comment you're agreeing with.
I'll start:
A.
I - Bugmaker 1.
I - Xopher 2.
A, B, E, F, I #1
B
E
F
G
I - Bugmaker 1
I - Xopher 2
I - Sum.Zero 3.
Jesus Xoph', I think you've cracked the troll problem!
I didn't like commenting anyway.
A
B
I
L
I
F
Y
ask your doctor if it could be right for you
bok, bok, bok, bok
global warming.
wntd t pck "" nd "" bt my cmmnts kp gttng dsmvwld.
You left out:
J. I need a unicorn chaser!
I - Bugmaker 1
I - Xopher 2
Don't some snake venoms have chemicals that pre-digest the meat? So maybe "poisonous snake killed chicken" is extra tender?
Hi Ark! You now appear to be a moderator.
B,C,H
Nose.. yes I do!
I was an AdjunctMod for a few months, and now I've got a badge. I'm on GMT watch :)
This is beautiful Xopher. How about adding:
J. This list trivializes or doesn't address the real issue this post raises.
also, the list should include:
K. Pft, this is really old news. I heard about this a month ago on another site. Laaame.
L. You guys don't know what you're talking about, but I do, because I've eaten at this restaurant/killed chickens this way and also besides I am the chef/I am a chicken, etc.
Congrats Ark!
B.
#13 Mark: Did I miss a deeper issue that isn't covered on the list?
Poison? I wonder if the meat tastes funny, or is dangerous - like fugu?
Arkizzle - congratulations! I'm still an adjunct and don't expect to get a badge any time soon, if ever.
Mark - Just trying to cut down on the usual stuff we get in comment threads on something like this, so we could get to the real issue. The list was intended to be the trivial and/or predictable part of the commentary, so that we could get to the real discussion. For my money the real discussion starts with Nosehat 10, which begins to address the "why would people do this" question.
If I've offended, I apologize. I wasn't trying to trivialize the post at all.
I will not be classified. The post's title is inaccurate -- snakes are venomous, not poisonous. Common mistake in diction. Venom is almost always not poisonous, perhaps because if a snake is going to go to the trouble to bite something, its probably thinking about eating it too. I've heard of other dishes containing snake venom, usually whiskey (shut up, whiskey is too food). I've never once heard of a case of snake venom poisoning. I dunno though, I'm no expert.
I have no feeling on the government interference on this matter, nor the ethical issues raised by forcing one animal to kill another. Maybe I'm a sociopath. My first thought was, "could we cook the snake inside the chicken, like turducken?".
This comment brought to you by the recaptchas "morsel" and "braised". Okay, so I got morsel the first time and cycled through for another food related one. Does that make me a bad person too?
Why? Is this a cultural thing? Like the snake killing the chicken imbues the chicken with some snake essence or something that then I get from eating said chicken? A buddy of mine went to China and said he ran into lots of bottle of alcohol with snakes in them, and other things, kinda like the worm in tequila, that supposedly imbued the drinker with some power of the animal(s) inside it. Or maybe he misunderstood what they were saying, dunno.
Or could the chicken thing be more of a "hey, our BBQ chicken is so spicy because we kill the chickens with snake venomz!!!" kinda thing? I don't spreken zie Chinese, so I'm not sure if the video explains this or not.
Thank goodness this was stopped - an extreme example of animal cruelty.
I'm betting that the manner in which the chickens were killed had a major effect on the taste of the meat depending on what the snake's venom does biologically to kill it's prey. Other than simply being a sales gimmick, this may have been why the restaurant choose to kill the chickens in this manner. -still, unforgivable. Also, I'm not sure what effect the cooking process has on venom, but I do know that many snake venoms are harmless when ingested as long as you don't have a way for the poison to enter your bloodstream, e.g. an ulcer or mouth sore, etc.
Anyone know what kind of snake that is? Maybe its venom isn't dangerous when taken orally.
My greatest sympathy is with the chicken, of course, but the snake doesn't look too happy either.
1) what kind of snake do you suppose that is?
2) is this all one chicken, and are we to conclude that the snake is really that reluctant to envenomate the chicken?
@19, if this is cruel to any animal, it's the snake that loses.
In all, it's really not a great show. All three animals (the snake, the chicken, and the homo sapien) appear to be pretty disinterested.
Xopher -- on the contrary, Xopher -- I love your list! You are correct, my additional list item is the one thing that *is* worth talking about!
E. "Raising them in factories and slaughtering them traditionally is just as cruel."
I think the "traditional" method of raising and slaughtering chickens is what my grandmother remembered about them when she was growing up. You have a bunch of them running around the yard. You feed them, protect them, let the kids name them, and occasionally one of them mysteriously disappears and coincidentally, you have chicken for dinner that night.
There isn't an option for the molecular weight of snake venom and its ability to penetrate the stomach lining. those were the first things i thought about
Cpt. Tim, there isn't an option for that because it's not among the boringly predictable responses. Tell us more!
I'm holding out for a chicken killed by lightning bolt and marinated in box jelly tentacles.
I'd like to cast my vote for #2 as the best BoingBoing comment ever please. Thank God for Xopher.
Oh, and I'll have an E, please.
27 Xopher, c'mon - Into which boringly predictable slot did my comments fit?
tom! i dont think he was talking about you gramma! whew, take a breath, homie! cpt. t. was talking about x's fine catalog of fetid and urbane responses one would expect in this thread. he labeled them A.-I. but your first comment would probably fall somewhere about A. and C.
Nothing of the kind, Tom! You didn't complain that there was no item on the list for your comment. I was explaining to Cpt. Tim that that's a GOOD thing.
Your comment was actually interesting, and not at all the usual/boring.
(Now don't go acting like it's weird that I'm being nice. I'm actually a very nice person.)
Rev. min T, - I said SLOT, not... nevermind. And, my comments certainly didn't fit into A or C. I know you're trying to teach me something... Think Tom, think!
I'll meditate on this for a bit and get back to you. In case you didn't know, "meditate" in the deep south means drink beer.
all I can think about is how to incorporate this into some kind of sexual act.
it was the god's will the chicken died anyway, BTW.
31 Xopher, Ok - and I was just picking at you before when I implied your being nice was unusual.
Tak, let the snake bite yer dingle so it makes it tingle.
PS, I initially read that as "children killed by..." and I was a little curious as to why the cause of death had anything to do with getting human child meat pulled from a restaurant's menu.
That's good to know, Tom. I didn't know what to say at the time.
We just had our annual hatching of snakes out by the barn and the chickens ate them, just as they did last year, and who knows how many years before I noticed. Thus, it is only fair that snakes seek revenge by dispatching chickens.
I couldn't watch more than 20 seconds of the 5-minute vid. Those people are FUCKED UP.
I consider this animal torture.
I move for a Snakebite Chaser. Um, I mean a Unicorn Chaser. Snakebite Chaser will be the name of my new mixed drink though. Patent pending.
As best as I can tell from the video, the snake is an elapid (most likely a taipan.) (The giveaway is the way the snake bites the chicken- different families of venomous snakes have different methods of envenomating their prey.)
Hence, the snake venom is primarily (and very highly) neurotoxic. The venom will have very little (if any) effect on the "meat" of the chicken (unlike hemotoxic venom, such as that from a rattlesnake or other viper bite.)
Furthermore, the act of cooking the chicken will denature (destroy) any venom remaining (thus making the meat safe to eat.) Even if the chicken were eaten raw, it is highly unlikely the venom would survive the stomach acids of the person eating it (and as a commentator noted above, the venom would need a way of directly entering the bloodstream to have an effect on the person.)
Nonetheless, I would strongly advise against anyone attempting to kill chickens this way (for cooking or other purposes.) As an old saying goes in the herp community, there are two types of people who handle venomous snakes: those who have been bitten, and those who will be bitten.
Surely part of the point of this incredibly inefficient method is some sort of Jackass/Wildboys/Fugu/worm-in-the-tequila edginess?
It would be featured on the menu as a speciality - for those that dared. Whatever the actual effect of venom is, it sounds extreme.
Is there some benefit to taste by using a neurotoxin? Maybe from elevated lactic acid in the paralyzed muscles? Maybe increased moisture retention due to tension in all the muscles.
I know that paralytic shellfish poisoning and BoTox actually lock your rough muscle fibers together in a way that remains after death. That has to affect the texture somehow.
Xopher, I love what you did up there.
and in times past in Merrie Olde England they would have feasts wherein a live swan would be roasted at the table. (this later degenerated into Rotary dinners with GOP speakers). China (and other Asian countries) bewilders me sometimes. How long has the benefit of the Buddha been upon them and available and how yet mindless cruelty to those whose lives are already forfeit to our own prevails.
ever seen The Naked Prey?
Bites dog man.
anybody know what it is they're drinking towards the end of the video? what's that thing they're breaking apart and swishing around?
It's nice to see the 'live monkey brains' urban myth being brought out again in the article.
#43, Anonymous:
I'd think it would be more likely to be an indigenous species than a taipan. Possibly Chinese cobra? But it's not really possible to tell from the video.
This is unacceptable.
If your going to be killing chicken in dramatic fashion; bets should be placed first on where the chicken ends up.
Snake, this is chicken. Chicken, this is snake.
Anonymous 29: Thank you!
I had the same experience as #25 Tom's grandma. We didn't name the chickens though. We played with the chickens, especially during feeding time, but we started off knowing that some of those chickens are going to end up being eaten.
So how do you kill a chicken traditionally? I didn't actually did this myself, because when I was 10, we moved to the city. But I watched it lots of times. Usually, it's grandma who does this. Sometimes it's my mother. First you catch the chicken, and hold it by the wings. Tie it's legs so don't scratch you (the pros skip this step). Then slit it's throat. Then you watch it bleed out. Push it down to make it "lie down" on the floor.
If you're inexperience, you get someone to help you hold the chicken so it doesn't trash and make you accidentally cut your finger. Other times, it's not necessary, but it's something to do, for a 10-year old kid eager to help. :)
If you want to eat the blood, you catch it in a bowl. The chicken trash for a while, and appears dead after less then a minute. It's obvious, even to a 10 year old, that the chicken suffered extreme pain in that short period. Of course you don't empathize with the food anymore than a cat will be squeamish about killing rats.
In restaurants, they kill the chicken by simply chopping the head off. It seems to die faster. There's certainly less trashing. I don't know if there's less pain. Guillotine certainly thought so. That's why in made the machine.
#53 posted by dainel:
Er, no. You hold it under your arm, and break its neck. It's instant. No thrashing, no 'extreme pain'. Well, that was the tradition in my family, anyway.
whatever happened to the dignity of a final cigarette and blindfold?