I read this recent news story about a Kentucky Chinese restaurant dragging road kill into their restaurant and the town became skittish and shut the restaurant down.
Is eating road-killed venison a health hazard? What is the difference between a bow/gun-shot deer and and a road-killed deer, in terms of health concerns?
Can a road-killed deer be converted into quality acceptable by health depts by some form of inspection? Or, does restaurant quality venison have to come from deer farms?
Animals that are killed, independent on the method, have to be examined by a veterinarian and a sample should be tested. When the test comes back clean, the animal can be butchered and eaten.
However, a restaurant kitchen is not an abattoir and there's a high risk of cross-contamination. Think about the fur, the dust, the lice or other insects on the carcass. This means a restaurant should not butcher animals. Period.
If you take a road-kill home, take a sample (the tongue) to the local vet.
In Alaska moose roadkill is a common occurrence. Each one represents hundreds of pounds of perfectly usable meat.
The state maintains a waiting list of charities that are called to butcher and distribute the dead animals.
Obviously the health risk in Alaska is much lower than in Kentucky just because of the lower average temperature.
There is no difference how it dies, by bow, shotgun or truck. The only concern is what diseases the animal may have but you have those same concerns if you're a hunter.
Now, I own a restaurant but I don't know what our inspector would say if I started butchering animals we dragged in off the street. While he may be fine with it, it's the appearance to the unknowing customer that may cause problems and, possibly, nothing beyond that.
The first issue is you don't know when or why it was killed.
If you pick something off the roadside, maybe it looks fresh, but it only has to have been there a day or so and who knows what has crawled into it to lay eggs, licked it, nibbled at it, etc.
It's possible that the animal was hit by a vehicle because it was already sick and wandered into the road. Not being able to see the way it walks etc means you can't know this.
What is the difference between a bow/gun-shot deer and and a road-killed deer, in terms of health concerns?
If you shoot or otherwise kill an animal for food purposes, you could be unlucky and it have some disease or parasite etc. However at least you know it was fresh and how it died, and can see it's movement beforehand.
Also a professional hunter will kill it without damaging certain organs and bones. Being hit by a car might mean the animal has burst organs that can taint the meat. Or shattered bones that are distributed in the meat you end up eating.
Personally, I don't think it's worth the risk at all. But many do, and I guess you can become reasonably experienced to identify if it's safe or not, like picking mushrooms and knowing which ones are safe to eat.
