Louisiana Health Officials Destroy 1,600 lbs. of Hunter-Donated Venison

Helping the homeless and hungry through the donation of venison and other game meat is one of hunting’s greatest–and least reported–contributions to society. Hundreds of shelters and soup kitchens around the country rely on hunter-donated meat to feed those in need. So I was particularly appalled by this story coming out of Louisiana where state officials not only barred a local shelter from serving hunter-donated meat, but also destroyed 1,600 pounds of venison they found in the shelter’s pantry. If you or I would have poured bleach over perfectly good, hunter-harvested meat, we’d have ended up with a very expensive citation for wanton waste. In Louisiana, state officials are proud of their work in “saving” the homeless from what they deem as unhealthy meat, despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of pounds of venison are eaten without incident at shelters across the U.S. every year.

From The Daily Caller:
_Louisiana officials are considering solutions after state health inspectors destroyed 1,600 lbs of deer meat donated by hunters to a local homeless shelter.

Rev. Henry Martin, executive director of the Shreveport-Bossier Rescue Mission, which provides food and shelter for the homeless in Northwest Louisiana, told The Daily Caller that the organization had been serving deer meat donated by area hunters for decades and, to his knowledge, nothing like this had ever happened before.
_

_”There was no need for this to happen — we’ve got hungry people who need meals. That very day, we have about 230 people on average in our system, and you multiply that by three meals a day, times 365 days a year, you’re going to get well over 200,000 meals,” he said, explaining that the charity needs as much food as it can get.

According to the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, the agency received a complaint that deer meat was being served at the mission. State regulations bar food establishments from serving hunted deer meat.

In late January, the department’s health inspectors investigated the facility, discovered the deer meat — which had been appropriately processed at an area slaughterhouse — and destroyed it in a dumpster by dousing it in bleach so that animals would not eat it._

What your thoughts? Should the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals be cited for wanton waste?