We don't eat swans

http://modernfarmer.com/2014/05/come/

by drjohnson • 12 years ago

113 134 12 years ago

darklajid4• 12 years ago

That article is .. devoid of new information. It claims that we don't eat swans (maybe? probably? I certainly never did.) but fails to provide even a hint of an answer. Unless I miss a hidden link for a page 2 or 3 that is a very long "So we don't eat a big bird, think about it", which is .. thought provoking if you're feeling nice, lacking content if you're not.

Jumping between vastly different regions doesn't help either ("Swans are the property of the crown in the UK, but a pest in Michigan." What??).

dang3• 12 years ago

Perhaps you didn't, but I learned much from the article. I didn't know that swans are crown property in England [1], that only the royal family and the fellows of St. John’s College of Cambridge (!) are allowed to eat them, or that they have become pests in Michigan (which of course is relevant; the post is not about a region, but about swans). I didn't even realize that there was a taboo against eating swans, though it seems obvious now.

1. The article contains an interesting link to "An Act Concerning Swans" (1482): http://www.theswansanctuary.org.uk/images/an%20act%20concern...

darklajid4• 12 years ago

Hey. I certainly don't want to ruin that article for you. For me (German, haven't left the country except for random vacations to France, NL, CH, IT or something and a year in IL) that was well-known. I've been in the UK once, in London, for two days. Guess that's a matter of which trivia based games you play or something.. ;-)

Michigan: No idea about that, that WAS news to me. But the article is about "Why don't we eat swans" and the Michigan part is really a bad example. So ... it's a pest? No hunting season though? And no explanation?

Frankly, I like swans. I regularly met and fed a couple of swans in Cologne in Germany here, checking on the young ones if the season was right.

I'd love to eat them though.

The article, for me at least, fails to deliver at least a hint of an answer to the question it proposed. That's just a bad format for me. If your main subject is a question, you need to at least try to answer it (and "yeah, they might be cute" isn't it).

ChuckMcM3• 12 years ago

There was also an interesting link about why we should consider eating invasive (non-native) species. Personally I think the Canadian Geese around Oracle HQ in Redwood City could use a good thinning.

christudor• 12 years ago

   There once was a man from St John's
   Who coveted one of the swans,
   "Oh no" said the Porter,
   Please take my daughter,
   The swans are reserved for the dons.

gweinberg• 12 years ago

I felt the same way. It asks "why don't we eat swans any more?" but as far as I can tell in the US we never did, and in fact the closest thing to an answer is just that we never got in the habit. I get the impression the excess swan problem in Michigan is a recent thing, probably a result of a decline of some swaniferous predator.

jqm13• 12 years ago

LOL@swaniferous predator.

Maybe they could introduce cold hardy alligators to Michigan? But then there would be two problems....

qbrass• 12 years ago

People buy them as a pond decoration, then turn them loose when they become aggressive as adults.

taejo• 12 years ago

swaniferous (swan-bearing) =/= swanivorous (swan-eating).

JoeAltmaier• 12 years ago

Ironic: HN folks quibbling about a bad article title.

lotsofcows• 12 years ago

Heaven forfend the article could be addressed to mankind! Obviously it was addressed to USAians and was given an odd title by mistake. That's definitely the intuitive, obvious, straight-forward possiblity.

Zigurd2• 12 years ago

As long as it doesn't mention domestic surveillance or the iffy state of an economy propped up on QE, it's a perfectly cromulent HN topic.

ebbv• 12 years ago

Yep, this article is a completely content free fluff piece which can be summarized thusly:

"We don't eat swans. They are a pest in michigan. Why don't people eat swan?"

That is not an article it's something you'd say at a party while drunk and everyone would look at you funny.

withdavidli3• 12 years ago

Answer right in the article. "too cute to eat".

Falling3• 12 years ago

That doesn't typically stop us. Cows (especially young ones) are incredibly cute. Lamb are the quintessence of cuteness. Rabbits are cute as well.

gajomi• 12 years ago

The author insists on this, and I guess it is true that this notion is promoted by popular culture. But to me it just seems insane. Have these people ever seen a swan? I mean, whenever I get close to one it is readily apparent that I am dealing with some outgrown aggressive river-beast. The only thing keeping it from biting my head off would seem to be a couple factors of two missing in the volume, which a few thousand years of evolution might have an easy solution to. I see very little cute in swans...

the_af4• 12 years ago

Agreed. A swan is no cuter than a duck, which is a common dish in many menus. Also, we eat a lot of animals which could be considered "cute". A little lamb, for example, or a piglet. So cuteness can't be the answer.

ensignavenger2• 12 years ago

I own chickens, and find them quite "cute" but that doesn't stop me from eating them.

greggman• 12 years ago

Rabbits are arguably cuter than swans and yet you can get rabbit to eat quite easily.

In fact they're so cute when the French wanted to boycott the World Cup in 2001 because the Koreans eat dog the Koreans countered with "And you eat those cute bunnies". (or so I was told)

ArkyBeagle• 12 years ago

In the past, the upper class in England would eat swans.

kefka• 12 years ago

Because they do not sell it at the market.

Ive found all sorts of meat (22 types from my specialty butcher), yet swan isn't there. Perhaps it's "too beautiful" to eat, or perhaps it has a more visceral "horse meat" kind of feeling to it.

I don't know. And the article is lacking in detail. So, the answer is "it's not sold".

jqm13• 12 years ago

But this leads to the question of "why don't they sell it at the market"?

And the answer to that might be because people wouldn't buy it. Or if they did, only once because it tastes like an old glove that was left in the parrot cage.

dllthomas7• 12 years ago

The one quote in the article about the taste was positive...

dvfurlong• 12 years ago

Because the Queen owns them all except St John's Oxford swans who have permission

graeme• 12 years ago

This is true in the UK. Here's the source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_John's_College,_Cambridge#Ea...

I have no doubt this influence culinary attitudes in all of England's former colonies as well.

waterfowl3• 12 years ago

SJC is at Cambridge

001sky• 12 years ago

a number of the college names overlap both place, including st johns , but only cambridge-resident fellows can have "unmarked" swan.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_John%27s_College,_Oxford)

oh_sigh• 12 years ago

Wrong. The queen of england can only lay claim to swans that are in England, and even at that, she only has claim to the "unmarked mute swans in open water".

dang3• 12 years ago

We changed the title (from "Why don't we eat swans?") in an attempt to ward off bikeshed arguments about it.

waterfowl3• 12 years ago

Swans are kind of assholes in my experience and the "mute swan"(the one most people think of) has become a massive pest among the fisheries/parks/etc crowd.

I'm generally a pretty adventurous cook/eater and did a goose for christmas last year(geese are a hella pest but somehow the dead one I bought was $70 or something) and probably wouldn't do a swan if it's similar. Geese are almost "beefy"

jeffbr132• 12 years ago

Yep, goose is quite a dark meat, and is easily overcooked to dryness. But potatoes (or anything) roasted in goose-fat should be the highlight of anyone's christmas dinner!

dllthomas7• 12 years ago

Agreed. Goose is all about the goose fat.

ryanbrunner• 12 years ago

If swan is anything like goose (which I can only imagine it is), it's probably too fussy for the average home meal anyways. Goose can be delicious, but it's not something you'd cook outside of an occasion like Christmas.

nerfhammer• 12 years ago

A lot of people don't realize the Mute Swan is an invasive species to North America

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/cerc/danoff-burg/invasion_bio/in...

selimthegrim• 12 years ago

Larry David has already come to this realization publicly.

http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/curb-your-enthusiasm-the-black-...

arrrg• 12 years ago

Are geese adventurous? Where I’m from (north-eastern Bavaria) roasted goose breast with potato dumplings are a a common Sunday dinner meal (duck breast is less common, at least in restaurants, but my grandparents and parents often made it). Pork is obviously the standard thing to roast and consequently more common overall, but I would argue that at least where I’m from this roasted geese breast is a bigger deal than chicken based meals. Especially if it’s a Sunday dinner.

Goose is also popular for Christmas, turkey not really. Actually, goose is probably the thing to make for Christmas where I’m from.

Goose is obviously not chicken or turkey, but I really love it with very fatty gravy, a crispy, salty crust, and quite dry meat. I love fried chicken, too, I think everyone does, plus turkey, but that’s not what I’m looking for when eating roasted goose breast.

waterfowl3• 12 years ago

It is not something the average american home cook would attempt, not because it's hard but because they don't tend to be stocked in normal grocery stores, and when they are(around holidays) they're really expensive.

Add to the fact that the pure liquid fattiness of the(even raw) bird in my experience makes it a huge hassle(I was told by my grandmother whose house I cooked it at that her oven smelled strongly of goose/grease until she ran the hardcore clean cycle).

"anecdotally" eating goose is not something that I was exposed to(outside of a "wild game dinner" put on by a hunting club) in my generic(fairly privileged) middle american childhood and I was exposed to a lot of cuisine(adventurous father)

freshyill• 12 years ago

Oddly enough, goose isn't particularly common as a food in the U.S., even at Christmas. And this is in spite of the fact that we've had goose drilled into our collective consciousness as a traditional Christmas main course (and they're a very common nuisance animal).

We eat tons of turkey in the U.S., but usually sliced. Most people only roast a whole turkey at Thanksgiving, but it's not uncommon to make it at Christmas. In the U.S., if you're cooking a bird, it's probably a chicken. Duck is more of a restaurant thing, particularly at slightly nicer Chinese restaurants.

This story has got me really thinking. I made a fig pudding (adapted from a 120-year-old British recipe) at Christmas two years ago. It was OK. I think I overdid it with the amaretto. Maybe my next Christmas cooking adventure will be goose.

a2tech• 12 years ago

It really depends on the area and age of the people eating. Growing up (way in the country) many of my older family members relished goose and duck. We kept them in a steady supply, but never really enjoyed the flavors ourselves. Now that I live in the city, many people I meet enjoy duck, but its a very different duck then what I grew up with-the duck as I knew it was wild, and very gamey. The duck most people enjoy are farm raised and more fatty and less gamey.

kephra• 12 years ago

Its allowed to hunt swans in Germany. Several thousand swans are shoot here. And they taste fine.

So I guess the claim that people in US dislike eating swans still comes from their English heritage, where swans had been royal game only.

jontas• 12 years ago

When I saw your username I figured it had to be a new account registered to post this comment. I was wrong, well done!

saregama2• 12 years ago

Humans eating habits should evolve ! Go Vegetarian !

saregama2• 12 years ago

Ok. Ok.. Suit yourself :)

vernie• 12 years ago

I'd eat swan. Somebody cook it up for me.

dllthomas7• 12 years ago

Buy it and come over, I'll cook it.

31reasons• 12 years ago

I would eat swan just to prove a point that its not fair for chickens just because of the looks.

jqm13• 12 years ago

The article doesn't provide the most likely answer...

Because they don't taste very good.

the_af4• 12 years ago

The article quotes an opinion saying they are delicious:

“We once ate a swan at Christmas nine or ten years ago,” [chef Mario Batali] told Esquire. “It was delicious — deep red, lean, lightly gamey, moist, and succulent… but I’ve never seen swan on a market list.”

jqm13• 12 years ago

I missed that.

But "lightly gamey" doesn't sound very good to me.

I cooked a goose once out of curiosity. As another poster mentions it was very expensive. And, it wasn't very good. An $8 chicken beat it hands down.

If swans were really tasty they would have probably been commercially farmed a long time ago. So I have to believe they really don't.... taste very good. Queen of England aside, there are plenty of other countries that would have raised them commercially.

suyash2• 12 years ago

What kind of discussions are propping up to #3 on HN front page. There is more general topic discussion than Hacker related discussion (btw I meant hacker in the good sense)

Russell91• 12 years ago

The problem is that ppl like you and me can't downvote. Voting systems without downvotes take the expectation of the half-rectified utility across the readership, not the regular utility. So ridiculous articles like this one can survive in spite of having negative true utility. Also, more sensational articles are naturally at an advantage (expectation scales linearly with standard deviation on half-rectified functions). Just one way of thinking about it.

jqm13• 12 years ago

I personally love novel and lighthearted articles.

Particularly on Friday afternoon when I don't feel like doing much.

dang3• 12 years ago

Please reread the Hacker News guidelines. Any articles that gratify intellectual curiosity are on topic. This article may be a bit fluffy, but it fits the bill.

hmsimha• 12 years ago

This article may be a bit fluffy, but it fits the bill.

I don't even know whether this was intentional, which makes it the best kind of wordplay

nogodo• 12 years ago

We shot a swan for the sole purpose of eating it. It was lovely and served a large number of people (apx 8) with plenty of leftovers.

This was in a country where they are protected but are a pest and are in large numbers locally. Protected largely for historical reasons (the Queen).

In future I would (will) use the pressure cooker however.

mmcclure• 12 years ago

Kinda off topic, but did anyone catch the comments from "Terrence Andrew Davis"? Google this guy...can't figure out if he's a real, mentally unstable human or a random text generator, but supposedly he wrote an os: http://templeos.org.

Uh...and Swans and stuff...

danford• 12 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=TempleOSV2

Probably him. Or some guy with a lot of time on his hands pretending to be him.

icebraining• 12 years ago

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/software-engineer/templeos-...

RommeDeSerieux• 12 years ago

This reminds me to log in more often.

johnvschmitt• 12 years ago

Since the article was short on answers, here's one possible answer as to "why we don't eat swans":

Their numbers are too small to get into volume "manufacturing" (CAFO's).

15,000 swans. That's cute.

We harvest 10,000 kiloTonnes of cattle per year in the USA alone. That means, our CAFO'S produce about 2 million pounds of beef for every 1 swan we could harvest.

Our food system loves repeatable processes & volume efficiencies that wild game can't provide.

Note: I may be nearly vegetarian, & eat only local organic meat rarely. But, the facts of CAFO's dominate the market.

jqm13• 12 years ago

If they were really that good they would raise them like turkeys.

My guess is that royalty ate them initially largely because they looked regal. The fact that they redressed them with the feathers before serving lends further credence to this idea.

Geese are pretty awful to eat.. particularly wild geese from what my brother in law says. Swans are probably even worse.

dllthomas7• 12 years ago

We'll agree to disagree about geese, I guess.

nraynaud• 12 years ago

let's talk about Safran, of US made foie gras, or kangaroo. I don't believe in your explanation.

jasonlaramburu• 12 years ago

What about black swans lol?

geoffc• 12 years ago

Same problem with the seals in New England. They are cute and protected and exploding in population with negative effects on the fish stock. Canada restarted seal hunting to protect the cod fishery and it's working for them.

krisgee• 12 years ago

and it's working for them.

Yeah, against massive international outcry from people who don't live here and don't understand that fisheries is literally the only job left.

jliptzin2• 12 years ago

"others preferred to stuff the bird with a series of increasingly smaller birds"

Dynamic eating!

jqm13• 12 years ago

I found that comment actually amusing.

I would upvote it to counter whoever downvoted it but not enough karma.

jqm13• 12 years ago

I guess some people have not been exposed to dynamic programming?

ratsbane• 12 years ago

Reminds me of Porterhouse Blue, the 1970s satirical novel about life in the fictitious Porterhouse college at Cambridge, where swans were served at massive feasts and "porterhouse blue" became another name for a stroke caused by excessive consumption: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porterhouse_Blue

TimFogarty• 12 years ago

On a related note, fellows of St John's Cambridge are the only people outside the Royal Family allowed to eat unmarked mute swans in the UK: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_John's_College,_Cambridge#Ea...

Zigurd2• 12 years ago

For one thing, you'll need a larger than normal oven. The largest turkeys at the neighborhood turkey farm are about 30 lbs., the size of a small swan, and, while you might be able to physically stuff a bird that big into a newer oven that has maximal cooking volume, it won't cook very well. Turkeys are lean, but if you tried to roast a swan, your roasting pan might overflow with fat and if that catches fire it will burn like a gallon of liquefied paraffin. That's a pretty good way to burn down the house.

Pxtl• 12 years ago

I didn't realize they were that large up-close. The obvious implication of that fact:

Swanturducken.

Rizz• 12 years ago

There are a few swan farms in The Netherlands, where swans are grown for consumption. They are considered a delicacy in several European countries, but they don't taste as good as duck or geese in my opinion. Some years ago there were a few incidences of Eastern European migrants taking wild swans for food, including some from protected species.

phormat• 12 years ago

Maybe swan is the decidedly-not-pork mystery meat that chinese food serves me in their 'special' fried rice? Anyone know what im talking about.. Smokey smell, looks like a fowl in its cooked form.

callumprentice• 12 years ago

Our local yakitori joint serves swan and lion - http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/05/17/burlingame-resta...

vj44• 12 years ago

My grandfather told my that during the WW2 occupation, fisherman occasionally used to catch & eat swans. Even during the war, the meat was not socially accepted for human consumption (ie. in western culture would consider it on par with "dog meat"), thus not very popular.

paganel• 12 years ago

Even during the war, the meat was not socially accepted for human consumption

For what it's worth, it was a huge scandal in the early 1990s in my country when it was rumored that members of our local gipsy community had eaten swans after they had just arrived in Vienna. It stuck along as a stereotype for at least a decade, if not more. As for the reference, the best I could find was this: http://books.google.ro/books?id=gHKm95EweOwC&pg=PT272&lpg=PT... , but there was also a Sun story from 2008 about "Eastern" immigrants having eaten swans.

ianbicking• 12 years ago

"In Michigan, however, which has the highest population of mute swans in North America, the creatures are considered pests. According to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, the statewide breeding population increased from about 5,700 to more than 15,000 in just ten years. The birds attack people in the water and on shore, particularly children that wander too close to their nests."

Sometimes when I get excited that an animal population gets to the point of potentially excess, I have to remind myself that it might be that we've adapted our lives to the absence of the animal and can't tolerate its presence even in modest amounts. Yes, swans are aggressive, but just because they are annoying doesn't mean they are overpopulated. Or concerns that some wild cats might take dogs. That sucks for the dog owner if it happens, but is it really okay to have the expectation that your animal can be in nature without any natural repercussions?

That said, once swans become common we shouldn't be afraid to push back against their aggressiveness. Nature does have away to balance behavior, and if humans think they just have to put up with asshole swans or else kill the swans I think we're missing out on some obvious behavior correction opportunities.

SoftwareMaven• 12 years ago

If that aggressiveness comes at the cost of other species, especially after humans either artificially introduced them or eliminated their natural predators, it is our responsibility to protect those other species. Conservation doesn't mean every individual of every species gets to live.

jqm13• 12 years ago

An alternative to killing and eating swans to deal with overpopulation might be to catch them early.

Swan Egg Omelet anyone?

dsirijus• 12 years ago

I've always wondered - when synthetic meat becomes economically viable, and animal rights come even closer to human, will we end up in much greater need systematically controlling most animal populations? What are we going to do with all those caracases? Feed the poor?

merrua• 12 years ago

In many of the celtic nations it's for cultural reasons. They are an animal people turn into in myth and "sacred" through custom. No reason however why they are not eaten in countries where they are not native.

sbirchall• 12 years ago

You know the best eggs in the world? Seagull Eggs. The harvesting of them from the wild is highly protected and I've only ever met a few old boys who used to poach them but I've read a few places (wild cookery and survival books) that the finest omelette you can make is one made from shite-hawk eggs. Guess that's an easier taboo to explain, though. I've had swan and goose and find them both perfectly acceptable meat. The best way I've found so far is to salt cure the breast like pastrami - as the meat is so dark it's very much like a salt cured beef. Very tasty.

joeevans1000• 12 years ago

the author shows their bias and agenda with the ridiculous claim:

"The birds attack people in the water and on shore, particularly children that wander too close to their nests."

absurd.

michaelfeathers• 12 years ago

Maybe the answer is rebranding. Dolphin fish are named 'Mahi-Mahi' on menus to disambiguate them from the mammals.

plugger• 12 years ago

People do hunt and eat swans. I'm from North Carolina and have a lifetime sportsman license there. Each year I can apply for two swan tags, I believe the cost is something like $5-$15 for the tags.

What this article doesn't explain is that swan meat isn't actually very good. Goose is better, but duck is the best (in my opinion). Goose is more gamey, tough, and has less meat than a duck. Swan is even more gamey than goose.

I suspect if the author spent more time investigating the "old boys network" he would have realized that hunting and consumption of swan does exist in the US today. Even a simple "hunting swan in america" google search turns up a useful information. Have a look at the aptly named swanhunting.com if you want more info.

We don't eat swans

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