WHEN I WAS working in Argentina years ago, one of the striking features of the pampas, or the open plains, was the rhea -- a large flightless bird with long legs that looks like a small ostrich.
The rhea ran wild on the grassy savanna, mixing with the cattle and occasionally grazing with the sheep. For occasional sport, or for entertainment of city-slicker guests, the cowboys of the estancia might display their skills in throwing the bola (three stone balls on the ends of a leather cord) to entangle the legs of the fleeing birds and bring them down.
At dinner one night, my rancher host served what he said was roasted rhea, along with more bountiful and flavorful plates of grilled beef, lamb and sausages. The bird tasted like tough, dry dark turkey meat that needed a pungent sauce.
In the touristy shops of Buenos Aires, soft and durable handbags and belts of the bird's hide were among the offerings. "Ostrich" was the typical quick explanation of the shopkeepers for Americans who did not speak Spanish or pursue the matter. The rhea's feathers are not as attractive as the ostrich's plumes, but they were sold as curios in shops.
These recollections of the marginal utility of the rhea, even where it is raised relatively wild, emerged last weekend with the story of the flap over a Mount Airy woman's effort to raise emus on her Carroll County farm. Avian-rights protesters held a demonstration against emu ranching, charging that it is an inhumane exploitation of wildfowl.
The emu is an Australian cousin to the ostrich and rhea, offering the potential commercial advantages of low-fat red meat, supple hides and fluffy hairlike feathers.
Key word is 'potential'
The key word is "potential," because breeding pairs now cost several thousand dollars, suitable processing plants are few and there is little call for the exotic meat. In fact, there is the suggestion that emu-raising may be a type of pyramid scheme in which breeders make money selling to other breeders until there is no one left to buy the animals and no consumer demand for the animal products.
The United Poultry Concerns picketers made that point. They also claimed that these large birds are defeathered and killed in great pain, because they are not stunned before slaughter like hoofed livestock (in order to better preserve the feathers). It is senseless to raise such animals for such a terrible end and for so little human benefit, they argue.
