Deer meat is not permitted to be served in a shelter, restaurant or any other public eating establishment in Louisiana,” said a Health Dept. official in an email to Fox News. “While we applaud the good intentions of the hunters who donated this meat, we must protect the people who eat at the Rescue Mission, and we cannot allow a potentially serious health threat to endanger the public

 The thing that got me about this bit is in all the southern jails they feed deer meat, some donate, some is road kill by troopers or country cops, THEY didn't say anything about that.

 We do have a deer problem in the south, most any time you ride the interstate highways you can see deer eating in the medium, there are many wrecks down here because of deer running out in front of cars, In 2006, the last year for which data is available from Georgia, the number was 13,545 car accidents caused by deer.   According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), deer-related accidents cause an estimated $1.1 billion in vehicle damage every year. 

 Take a northern state, Michigan during 2009, there were 61,486 reported car-deer crashes in this state.  That translates into one car-deer crash every nine minutes, 10 persons were killed in crashes with deer.  Another 1,571 were injured. These crashes are at least a $130 million a year problem in this state

 Here in the state of Georiga they work close with  Hunters for the Hungry, a group that has been donating wild game to shelters since 1993. Georgia Hunters for the Hungry is a partnership between the Georgia Wildlife Federation, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, and the Georgia Food Bank Association. more than 1.4 million households in Georgia sought help from our partner food pantries and agencies in 2010

Burgermeister, I was raised in Mobile, Al., I first heard of a "nutria " as a kid of about 9. being as how you mention them I looked them up, interesting how they got started here.  The earliest account of nutria spreading freely into Louisiana wetlands from their enclosures was in the early 1940s; a hurricane hit the Louisiana coast that many people were unprepared for and the storm destroyed the enclosures, enabling the nutria to escape into the wild. According to the Louisiana Dept. of Wildlife and Fisheries, nutria were also transplanted from Port Arthur, TX to the Mississippi River in 1941 and then spread due to a hurricane later that year. From 1932 to 2010 Louisiana lost enough acres of wetland to total the size of Delaware.

 The most recent program instituted to provide incentives for harvesting nutria is the Coastwide Nutria Control Program and it has proven to be the most successful in minimizing the nutria population.  Incentive payments paid out to those legally participating in the program.Essentially once a person receives a license to hunt or trap nutria then that person is able to capture an unlimited number. When a nutria is captured simply cut off the tail and turn it in to a Coastal Environments Inc. (CEI) official at an approved site. Each nutria tail is worth $5,  Nutria harvesting increased drastically during the 2009-2010 year with 445,963 nutria tails turned in worth $2,229,815 in incentive payments.

Another program executed by LDWF involves creating a market of nutria meat for human consumption, though it is still trying to gain public notice. Nutria is a very lean, fibrous, protein-rich meat; in certain ways it is much better than beef, chicken and turkey for the human body. It is low in fat and cholesterol with the taste, texture, and appearance of rabbit or dark turkey meat according to a study published in the Journal of Food Science.This same study tested the meat, before and after processing, and came to the conclusion that it is in fact safe for human consumption. There are few pathogens associated with the meat but proper heating when cooking should kill all microbes. The quality of the meat and the minimal harmful microorganisms associated with it make nutria meat an "excellent food product for export markets. ( Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia )

apcowboy wrote:

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It's not the world you and I grew up in, that is for sure!!

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 That's true in most things, but not in sneaky dirty politics.

butcher29 wrote:

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I like the part about poring bleach on it so it would be safe if animals ate it...lol...wtf

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 I thought it said they poured bleach on it so that animals would not eat it. Not so that it would be safe.