This very surprising meat that we should eat to save the planet

What if python meat became fashionable… for good reason ? monicadoallo/Getty Images

If you need to get over your distaste for insects when they are presented as a solution to reducing the carbon impact of livestock farming on the planet, you will probably need to. do the same with the python.

Very serious research has just confirmed the interest of this type of breeding in limiting global food insecurity.

How about a python tartare, enhanced with a yuzu condiment ? If the title is purely fictitious, the main ingredient could well one day be a real alternative to beef steak or filet mignon. Yes, we are talking about snakes! And this is not touted information at all, but the result of scientific research published in the journal Nature.

Carried out jointly by researchers from the Australian universities of Adelaide, Sydney and also Oxford (United Kingdom), with the support of a biology institute Vietnamese medical, the publication explicitly mentions the agricultural model of python farming as a solution offering "a flexible and effective response to global food insecurity".

According to the authors of this surprising study, to say the least, "in terms of food and protein conversion rates, pythons outperform all the main agricultural species studied to date". In other words, the ratio of the food snakes are given to grow to the amount of meat when they are slaughtered surpasses many others. #39;species. It stands at 1.2 for pythons compared to 1.5 for salmon, 2.8 for poultry, 6.00 for pork and 10.00 for beef.

These conclusions were obtained following an experiment carried out with two large species of pythons, specimens of which were raised on farms in Thailand and Vietnam. "Pythons grew rapidly over a 12-month period, and females grew faster than males.

Food consumption and early-life growth rates were strong predictors of total lifetime growth, with daily mass increases ranging from 0.24 to 19.7 g/day for Malayopython reticulatus and 0.24 to 42.6 g/day for Python bivittatus, depending on food intake, describes the study.

A new alternative

The snake appears all the more like a new alternative as these animals continue to gain weight even when they are fasting. Thus, in areas of the world where we cannot have regular access to water, this type of breeding would not suffer.< /p>

But a double question now arises, that of ethics at a time when animal welfare is a motivation for certain consumers who choose to adopt a plant-based diet, but also that of taste. Is snake meat taste interesting ?

A question that can only be asked in Vietnam where this type of consumption is not unusual, just like in Hong Kong. Elsewhere, and particularly in Europe and the United States, a cultural problem risks putting a brake on this initiative, even though science confirms the advantages of such consumption.