Sneaking Snake Onto the Menu
As global meat consumption continues to rise, our impact on climate does, too. Could snakes be the answer to a better meat?
The US meat industry has had a long love affair with three major sources of protein: cows, pigs, and chickens. While you can find different animals if you peruse your grocery store, the Big Three dominate the industry. Americans consume 56.5 pounds of beef per capita, followed by 48 lbs. of pork, compared to one pound of lamb and mutton. America’s love for cheeseburgers, bacon, and chicken nuggets isn’t slowing, but some are growing wary of the impacts of the current state of the meat industry—and how things might change as the planet heats up.
Enter the alternative choices to traditional proteins. There are soy proteins and seafood, whey powders and Impossible meat. There is the decision to just go vegan or vegetarian as a potential solution. A single person exchanging eating meat for a vegan diet reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 1.5 tons per year. If every American were to cut out one serving of chicken per week from their diet, it would save the same amount of CO2 emissions as taking 500,000 cars off the road. Despite these numbers, there’s a big problem: Americans don’t want to give up meat.
So, what is the solution here? It could be slithering just under our noses: snakes.
As far as food and protein conversion ratios, pythons outperformed all mainstream agricultural species studied to date. They’re incredibly tolerant of a variety of less-than-ideal situations: During the study, some pythons were fasted for over four months; while they lost weight during this time, they recuperated quickly after resuming feeding. They’re also tolerant of heat and drought, ideal qualities on a warming planet.
Few Americans go out of their way to eat snakes, but in the face of a climate crisis and growing worries about global food insecurity, more are opening their minds. Snake farming is common in some Asian countries, such as China and Thailand, and certain snakes are considered a delicacy (often, python species, due to their quick-growing nature). Because snakes as food are much more normalized there than they are in the US, there’s no hesitation about serving up python. Granted, reptile meat isn’t too different from chicken—it’s frequently compared to poultry in taste, and it’s also high in protein and low in saturated fats, although it’s sometimes oilier than other meats. Snake farmers benefit from low costs of operation and high production value. But would their systems translate well if there was a demand for snake meat globally?
A study published in Nature seems to find few faults in wide-scale snake meat farming projects. The researchers’ proposal covered two snake species commonly farmed in Asia—the reticulated python and the Burmese python—among multiple farms in Thailand and Vietnam. These two species are viewed as ideal for agriculture; these two grow fast, reproduce quickly, and are hardy, making them good candidates for large-scale farming.
However, pythons aren’t perfect. There’s one glaring issue with pythons as a farmed food: Pythons are carnivorous, and they usually feed on captive-bred rodents when kept as pets. According to the researchers in this study, the pythons in Thailand were often fed wild-caught rodents, but they also accepted “waste” protein (food scraps not usable for human consumption) from fish, pork, and chicken. Some farmers combined waste protein to make sausage-like diets for snakes. Snakes who ate them did well, but convincing them to give sausages a try instead of their ideal food, a live rat, was another matter. It’s not clear if it’s logistically possible to transfer farmed snakes solely to a waste protein diet—or how sustainable such a diet would be in the long run.
“The cost of food is going to be the biggest hurdle,” says Grant Milbury, the resident “Morph God” (in reference to snake color morphs) at New England Reptile Distributors. Milbury lives and breathes snakes. While he’s OKwith people eating them, too, he’s not sure it’s a good idea to farm snakes. He says farming a species that loves to eat rodents might not end up being cheap, which could turn away potential corporate investors. “I believe that pythons can handle much harsher conditions than typical livestock, although people seem to treat all reptiles poorly.” Milbury says that, for pythosn to be widely accepted (and ethically farmed) in the US, there would need to be vast regulation alongside public education. “Even then, getting people to enjoy a python filet might be a hard sell.”
It’s also possible that trying to introduce snakes to widespread agriculture could quickly backfire concerning animal welfare. While some believe that snake farming could be easier to perform ethically than most current livestock farming, it’s important to remember that most peoples’ opinions of snakes are, well, lower than those of cows and chickens. If given the opportunity, it’s possible that large-scale agricultural operations could treat farmed snakes poorly with few repercussions.
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Learn about the struggle to contain and hunt invasive species, like deer in Hawaii.
In America, we might not have to look far to find python to eat. The Burmese python isn’t only farmed for food, it’s a popular pet species that’s now been banned from Florida due to their status as an invasive species. Florida holds annual python-hunting contests in an effort to curb the population growth and prevent the loss of native species to the hungry snakes (which can grow over 16 feet in length). Most of these pythons are wasted instead of being used for food, but increasing demand for snake meat might motivate more people to try python (and work harder on eradicating them from Florida’s precarious ecosystem).
Avery Briar, who owns a pet ball python (another species sometimes found roaming the wilds of Florida, although less common than the Burmese), loves snakes, but agrees that sometimes eradication of invasives is the only way to go. “Dealing with invasive species is always an ethical challenge, and it’s very easy for something that’s supposed to provide a fix to go wrong and have unintentional ecological consequences,” he says. Briar’s not wrong: Cane toads, rabbits, and even cats are just a few species intentionally introduced to areas they weren’t originally from, and there’s few cases without significant ecological harm. But there’s also hope found in trying new things like python meat. “I think that if any sort of python meat is going to make it into more mainstream acceptance, this is what would have the best chance.”
America may not be ready to embrace an overhaul of our meat industry, even if the growing pressure to curb climate change demands it. But for those who aren’t shy of trying snake, more demand is a good thing. Florida could use fewer pythons, and the US could use some more sustainable sources of meat.
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