In the age of the Environmental revolution, it has become a trend to “go green!” and try to be as ecologically conscious as humanly possible. We’ve heard of the cars that run on vegetable oil instead of petrol, hybrid solar homes, and the emergence of organic farming. “Go Green!” has spread its roots through the thickets of westernized cultures, and it seems that it is trendy to live by the three R’s of going green—reduce, reuse, recycle. There is a fourth R that could potentially be added to the phrase—roadkill. A Canterbury man, Fergus Drennen, takes going green to a new level.
Drennen, also known as Fergus the Forager, is known for eating road kill. He has an extensive knowledge of organic ingredients and used to source high end restaurants with quality wild food for a living. After realizing that his lifestyle was counter intuitive to the principles of environmentalism, he quit working for restaurants and started teaching seminars that teach people the art of foraging. Drennen is even writing a cookbook and has a website devoted to wild recipes, plants, and sustainability.
If you’re imagining Drennen as an unpolished country bumpkin peeling rotted badger carcasses from the back roads, think again. The successful young Brit says that while squirrel, badger, pheasant, and seagulls are only a handful of the delicacies he prepares, Drennen assures that he does not eat something that has been rotting for days in the sun.
“If the animal is already dead I’m not part of that system,” he told ABC news. “I see it just as a resource like other things I find in the wild.” Drennen doesn’t approve of the slaughter of animals.
Drennen’s cookbook includes pheasant garnished with cuckoo flower, pan braised squirrels, and badger burgers. He even concocted a green wild leaf curd egg in honor of Doctor Suess. While he claims to never have gotten sick from eating road kill, he does insist on taking a worm supplement.
So will this new trend join the ranks of vegetable oil fueled hybrid cars and Samsung solar power cell phones? Drennen already has a following of foragers that sign up for his courses—he even offers course deals in Christmas packages! While the thought of road kill as a delicacy brings to mind a badger corpse emblazoned with tread marks and cooked over a campfire, Drennen’s menu may have the possibility to convince the palate and mind otherwise. Who knows. Maybe skunk fried steaks and gopher fritatas will be haute cuisine for the green people!
