How Lo(cal) Can You Go? Is Eating Turtles OK?
Who could possibly find anything bad to say about eating locally? After all, what’s the downside to dining on wild blackberries, dandelion greens, home-grown tomatoes and fresh-caught alligator snapping turtles?
Wait, what was that last one again?
Well, here in this corner of Northwest Florida I call home (and they don’t call it the “Redneck Riviera” for nothing), that’s a discussion that’s been raging this week. Seems a family from Jay, an inland (i.e., far from the touristy beaches) community, recently caught a 100-pound alligator snapping turtle … and decided to eat it.
“We’re from the woods, and we live off the land,” Gary Phillips, brother of the man who caught the turtle, was quoted saying in an article in the Pensacola News Journal. “A lot of people are making a big deal about this, but you’ve got to eat. I wish people could understand how it is to live out here … There’s not a Circle K or a McDonald’s you can run to.”
The family’s decision to make a meal of Goliath, as the turtle was briefly named, probably wouldn’t have raised any hackles had the News Journal not first published a photo and article about the initial catch. That started a snowballing effect of responses from readers, one of whom even offered the Phillips family $500 if they set the turtle free.
Instead, the Phillips chose to send Goliath to a taxidermist, who plans to send the meat back to the family. The meat will probably be enough to feed the family for well more than a week, Phillips said.
It’s important to note here that alligator snapping turtles in Florida are neither endangered nor threatened, and that locals have made meals of such creatures for generations. So is this acceptable locavorism or not? Personally, I wouldn’t eat Goliath, but turtle eating’s never been part of my heritage. And Goliath probably enjoyed a much happier, and longer, life than those store-bought chickens one reader suggested the family should eat instead.
What do you think? How lo(cal) are you willing to go?
Shirley, Your article brought back many memories of when I lived in Milton, south of Jay. One thing people enjoyed was mullett. It is very good if cooked correctly. We shouldn’t be too critical, but I too would have let Goliath free.
I suppose there wasn’t a hunting license appropriate for trapping the turtle to eat, as there is for turkey and deer? I don’t really know how those work, but there is a very healthy ‘eat the hunt and take care of where it lives’ contingent here in NWFL.
Otto, you bet: mullet’s a big-time favorite around here! Actually, I didn’t post this to be critical but rather as, pardon the expression, food for thought. After all, what is local eating? Is it just gardening? Or are hunting, fishing and turtle trapping part of the picture too? Michael Pollan asked the same question in “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” and concluded that, despite some misgivings about his wild boar-hunting adventure, his wild-harvested/hunted meal was the most satisfying of the three types he wrote about.
Sarah, you’re right: many of the people who hunt around here eat what they hunt. Again, I couldn’t do it, but there’s a valid argument to be made that well regulated hunting is actually more sustainable than factory farming.
As I said, food for thought …