Sausage and meatballs made from raccoon meat – what sounds bizarre has now brought a game butcher to local fame. How do you come up with such an idea?
An unusual picture in Michael Reiß’s slaughter room: a killed raccoon hanging on a meat hook. It’s slaughter day for a number of the small predators in the poacher’s hut in Kade. In the end, raccoon meatballs and raccoon sausages end up in Reiss’s cooling room.
The 45-year-old has not been a game butcher for long. In summer 2022 he received EU approval for game processing. Within a year, he had become a local celebrity with his raccoon sausages. Customers now even come to him in Jerichower Land in Saxony-Anhalt from Berlin and Leipzig. But how did he come up with this unusual idea?
After founding his company, the district became aware of him and invited him to the Green Week agricultural fair in Berlin as a representative of the district. “It rattled inside me. “Do you want to go there now with a deer salami that every district has?” says Reiß. “It had to be something special.” One evening the idea came to him: “We catch a lot of raccoons and then we just throw them away. So I called the veterinary office: “Man, can I process raccoons too?”
Raccoon cutlets? “Are you serious?”
The authorities explained to Reiß that the animals had to be examined for parasites, then he could get started. A “ball” is best suited as an “appetizer” for Green Week. So Reiß ended up with the raccoon meatball.
At the Green Week at the beginning of 2023, the visitors were initially amazed. “Are you kidding us?” and “Are you serious?” were the first reactions of many. “Many people decided to take the plunge,” says Reiß. The feedback was mostly positive.
After Green Week, he added the balls to his range, says Reiß. He also created a bratwurst made from raccoon meat for his food truck. The “raccoon breakfast meat” is now also available canned in jars for shipping. Mass production is not his goal, says Reiss. He wants to encourage one or the other to “set up their own trap and get this invasive species under control.”
Raccoons cause a lot of damage
According to hunters, the animals cause enormous damage to nature. They cleared out nesting boxes, destroyed tree hollows and ground nests and even ate aquatic creatures such as young pond turtles, said a spokesman for the Brandenburg State Hunting Association. “Raccoons can really do everything – except fly – and always seem to have a screwdriver with them to open nest boxes.”
According to the association, around 30,000 raccoons were shot in Brandenburg alone in the 2022/23 hunting year, almost ten percent more than in the previous hunting year. But that is far from enough, explained the association spokesman. The inventory is expanding “dramatically” in some cases.
Some conservationists are of the opinion that the raccoon is now part of the local wildlife and therefore has the right to a peaceful existence, according to the German Nature Conservation Association. In most cases it is not possible to reduce populations through hunting or trapping anyway.
Costs for meat inspection are high
Why do so few other butchers work with raccoon meat? “From a commercial perspective, this is probably a deterrent for some people,” says Reiß. The trichina test costs almost 14 euros per raccoon, plus the costs for the meat inspection and the 10 euros that he pays each hunter per animal killed. “That’s more than 25 euros in fixed costs without taking working time into account.” In contrast, there are only 1.5 to 2.5 kilograms of meat that he can get from the animal. “The profit margin is not the greatest,” explains Reiß. Still, it’s worth it for him. “Customers come to the farm shop and take four raccoon meatballs and another deer salami.”
“We don’t believe that a trend is developing here,” says the butchers’ guild in Berlin. Managing director Martin Stock says he knows raccoon processing primarily from the USA. “But I wasn’t impressed with either the taste or the consistency.”
Raccoon meat is very soft, explains Reiss. A salami made from raccoon meat therefore does not become solid, and the animal’s fat is quite oily. “It’s more like a spreadable sausage.” According to his own statements, he adds around 30 percent pork fat to his meatballs for a better consistency.
Reiß received praise for his idea from the Ministry of the Environment in Brandenburg. “It always makes sense to process or utilize animals that are hunted (…) into food or fur products,” said a ministry spokesman when asked. However, there is still no funding for the shooting of animals.
2023-11-19 12:18:52
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