Government Bureaucracy at it again…

Sometimes our government acts like it is suffering from a bad case of being anal retentive. There is a perfect example coming out of Louisiana.

Louisiana state health inspectors destroyed 1,600 lbs of deer meat donated by hunters to a local homeless shelter. The organization has been serving deer meat donated by area hunters for decades and nothing like this has ever happened before.

The shelter has about 230 people on average in their system, and you multiply that by three meals a day, times 365 days a year, you’re going to get well over 200,000 meals. The charity needs as much food as it can get

According to the Executive Director: “The venison is healthy, it is low in cholesterol, high in protein, low in fat. And it was processed; it is good meat; and people are hungry.

The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, said that the agency received a complaint that deer meat was being served at the mission. State regulations bar food establishments from serving hunted deer meat. . In late January, the department’s health inspectors investigated the facility, discovered the deer meat — which had been appropriately processed at an area slaughterhouse — and destroyed it in a dumpster by dousing it in bleach “so that animals would not eat it”.

The department wrote in a statement posted on their Facebook page. “Although the meat was processed at a slaughterhouse (Bellevue) that is permitted by the Louisiana Department of Agriculture to prepare and commercially distribute meat obtained from approved farms, deer are not an approved meat source to be distributed commercially.”

The Louisiana chapter of Hunters for the Hungry — which is endorsed by the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry and the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries on its website — donated the meat through the area processing facility.

This is exactly the kind of stupidity that drives me crazy. Now these homeless people will be deprived of a source of excellent protein. I love venison and if you were to get it in a restaurant (not in Lousiana) you’d be paying a very high price for your meal. But, because it’s not approved for commercial distribution, these people go hungry and the state’s welfare system will have to try to take up the slack –with tax dollars of course…..

Live Long and Prosper....