Meat manifesto

Outdoor Life Chief Editor Andrew McKean talked with me recently about what he calls the "meat manifesto". Essentially it embodies a basic human right to harvest meat and this, I guess you could call it a credo, challenges the beliefs of vegans and anti-hunting groups alike. "While the health and ecological costs of farmed meat are well documented, there is little information about the value of wild meat. But the future of hunting depends on our advocacy of wild protein: sharing wild meat is participating in an essential human sacrament. Whether it is an Angus cow, a red stag or a white tailed deer, what we were really looking at, I wanted to call it the meat manifesto because it is very much a first person imperative to better respect meat. The author is a guy from Newfoundland. He has taken this on as his defining initiative. What he wants to do is get people to return to the idea that meat is kind of a sacrament. I know that sounds religious but that's kind of the way he looks at it is the ability to share meat and the value of humans sharing meat from the dawn of time is something that made us humans. We gathered together around a campfire, whether it was in a cave or a clearing, and we shared the meat that we had gotten so his take on it is that meat is meat which is good, healthy and important for your diet or your life, but there's a deeper value to meet. It is a primitive value as humans and everything goes with that. Our ability to communicate and share, to keep meat not only for today but for tomorrow and wild meat is at the basis of all of that." Wild meat is no game.