How do you like your Iguanas? ... pets or food?

[eddie]

CSMNews story

How do you like your iguana?

By Kelly Hearn | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON – On a blustery afternoon, a delivery truck creeps through a cluster of ethnic food warehouses in northeast Washington and parks by the section of dock belonging to Distribuidora Cuscatlan, an importer of foods from El Salvador.

Frank Rodriguez, Cuscatlan's manager, walks past crates of rice before stepping into a gargantuan stainless-steel freezer. He opens a box that contains what many consider a culinary delicacy - iguana.

For centuries, iguana has been consumed throughout Central America; now it's showing up on a small but growing number of North American dinner tables.

But El Salvadoran entrepreneurs and US businessmen like Mr. Rodriguez - who supplies iguana to 60 markets in the Washington area - are doing more than providing a fondly remembered "taste of home" for Latinos now living in the US.

The budding market is also improving life in El Salvador. Raising iguanas on farms for export provides much-needed jobs, and it allows food to be grown while keeping the tropical rain forest intact. The industry even aids in rebuilding wild iguana populations, since many iguana farms periodically release part of their stock into the wild.

The increasing availability of iguana meat is due to several factors, including its reputation among Central Americans as a cure-all for everything from colds to poor sexual performance.

"People believe iguana meat does many things," says Alicia Chicas, a Salvadoran immigrant who manages a small market in southern Maryland. "That's why they are willing to pay."

Ms. Chicas thinks that one reason iguana has become easier to obtain in the US is that the Salvadoran community here has become wealthier over the years and able to afford it.

The meat is said to have a taste similar to chicken, but a bit stronger and tougher. At $14 a pound (retail), or about $50 for the average purchase, it isn't for ordinary suppers. Still, "the demand for them is higher than we can provide," Rodriguez says.

Iguanas live principally on fruits, flowers, and leaves. Once abundant through many parts of Central America, the tropical lizard's populations have suffered from overhunting and habitat destruction, causing the Salvadoran government, among others, to clamp down on hunting them.

That's where iguana farms can help. Instead of reducing the wild population, ranchers take advantage of the fact that the reptiles typically live 40 to 50 feet above the ground in rain forests. Farms hatch iguanas from eggs, grow them in a controlled environment for seven months, and then release them into forested areas on the farm. That way, local residents don't have to cut down trees to raise food.

El Salvador's main iguana ranch is in Zacatecoluca, a city of about 30,000 people located in the south-central part of the country. It, like other places, exports both the meat of garrobos (dark-skinned male lizards) and iguanas (green-skinned females), which can now be found next to chorizos and papusas in ethnic stores in the US.

A consistent demand for the meat might spawn a healthy micro-livestock industry in El Salvador that could breed jobs, says René Antonio León Rodríguez, the country's ambassador to the US, in a phone interview. Ambassador León hopes that iguana will join the ranks of ostrich, emu, and bison, other alternative meats vying for an increasing share of Americans' food dollars.

"It's good for your body, it's good for business, and it's good for the environment," he says.

While businesses are beefing up operations to meet what they hope is an expanding North American market, their eyes are also fixed on Asian markets, where consumers accustomed to eating snake wouldn't think twice about sinking their teeth into a garrobo.

"I talked to store owners who told me they sold out of iguana after a newspaper article came out about iguana meat," says León. "But it wasn't people from El Salvador who bought them out. It was Asians."

Iguana entrepreneurs are looking beyond Asia, though, and even beyond markets for frozen meat. León notes that some Salvadoran businesspeople are taking on the hard task of perfecting recipes for canned iguana soup, "which must be made by hand and with a lot of effort."

For this reason, he adds, demand for the soup currently outstrips supply. But it may be some time before cans of spicy iguana soup show up on US grocery shelves, since meeting the demand isn't the only obstacle exporters confront.

"We have iguana soup, but we don't have the proper license to distribute it yet," says Rodriguez of Distribuidora.

He and his father had to wait three years to get a fish and wildlife license from the Food and Drug Administration to distribute frozen iguana meat. But when permission is granted to distribute iguana soup, "we are ready," he promises.

[sebcambon]

Why does everything taste like chicken?
And if it does why not just eat chicken?
This is sad!

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[toker]

Kinda Twisted...

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[JuliusSqueezer]

maybe chicken just tastes like everything else...ever thought of that?

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[eddie]

Look what I found at the market!

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[NicoleRussell]

You are a sick man Eddie :wtf:

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[najaboy]

I personally don't see anything wrong with it, and would probably give iguana meat a try if I saw it on a menu.

	Iguana Iguana

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[thetupak]

ya in china they eat dogs and cats

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[eddie]

This stuff's showing up everywhere!!!

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[toker]

LOL, Eddie, you have one messed up Supermarket

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[reptigirl04]

I can't let Gollum know about this! Man, i think i'll stick w/ chicken...I like my iguanas as pets...not food.

	Iguana Iguana

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[BWSmith]

I have no problem with it. As long as animals are RAISED for the purpose of human consumption and not stripped from the wild, I have no moral issue with it. I love Gators. But I will eat farm raised gator on occasion. **shrug** Hmmm, I wonder how long before Iggys become a Game Species in FL

	Iguana Iguana

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[morti]

That brings up a good point... herpers keep Iggs as pets, yet in Florida there is a wild pest population of iggs... should we also advocate erradicating that wild population?

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[trinitywolf]

I don't see the problem either. People enjoy eating all kinds of meat. To me, there is no difference between one and another. I would not eat dog, but I certainly would not look down on someone that was raised on it and liked it. I like my dog as pets, but someone else may like them as BBQ.
Let me ask you a question though Brian...if there were farm raised rattlesnake, would you then think it was ok to eat that?

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[trinitywolf]

Good question Morti. I am actually for the extermination of any non-native species. We need to learn to manage our wildlife by not adding non-native species. I guess it's a fine line though...as long as it's legal to keep them, people will release them. Sad that so few irresponsible owners ruin it for everyone else.

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[BWSmith]

Let me ask you a question though Brian...if there were farm raised rattlesnake, would you then think it was ok to eat that?

I would be anxious to try some actually.

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[trinitywolf]

I would be anxious to try some actually.

That is about what I expected. Good for you!

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[JuliusSqueezer]

I am actually for the extermination of any non-native species.

So by that rationale, Mustangs running wild anywhere in the US should be exterminated? What about Egrets? These are just a couple of examples of animals that were introduced here. There were no horses in North America before the Spanish brought them. The Egrets hitched rides from Africa on slave boats...so did any Guinnea Fowl running around. Peafowl although pretty much contained to small areas where they are ALLOWED to roam certain parks, estates, gardens etc surely make some sort of impact on an ecosystem. My point here is a LOT of what is here now was introduced at some point. It happens. Sometimes it's devistating. Sometimes it isn't but to place a broad death sentence to any animal not native that has taken up root here for a period of time could cause other factors to come into play. Whatever changes these animals may have made by coming here are made and the ecosystems in many cases have adjusted to that. Taking them away will produce unpredictable changes. It is not likely that their demise will just revert things back to as they were. Bringing back Bison to the numbers they were pre 1800s might sound cool and we might have a sense of undoing the damage we did back then. But where would they roam now? Along the median of I-40? what animals, now established would suffer because of their comeback? With all the land development that has made drastic changes to the landscape and drainage routes around the areas they might graze, what would the erosion problems that would likely occur now cause? Iguanas have been running loose in Florida for a very long time. Not a massive, out of control population but not so rare either. I'm by no means saying that they should continue to be turned loose. That's just wrong for any number of reasons. But there comes a point where trying to correct certain man made problems or events just compounds things.

[JuliusSqueezer]

I just had another thought on this. Everything probably came from somewhere. How far back do we count? And why should humans be exempt? Europeans came here in 1492 if you don't count the Vikings. Kill all the white people first? Then the Hispanics and Black people? Asians..although since the "Native Americans" seemed to have migrated from Asia across the straight into Alaska and worked their way down...leave the Asians or do we count back beyond the Native Americans and just kill all humans...after all we are not a native species to North America.

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[Gecko-Guy]

Eddie, you have way too much free time on your hands. Editing cans of tuna to say "Iguana in water"? I do admit that you're good at it. They look very realistic.

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