Lion Burger: The Most Unsustainable Meat Ever

I know some restaurants feel they need to push the envelope in order to stay popular, but this is totally nuts. Il Vinaio, an Arizona dining establishment, recently started serving up a burger made from African lion meat. In addition to being, well, kinda sick, the King-of-the-Jungle sandwich is so earth-unfriendly it makes Burger King burgers look like sustainable wonder-foods.

First off, let me say that I'm an omnivore, and I feel there's a way to consume animal products in an ecologically friendly way. Vehement vegans may disagree, but that's just my personal belief. But even as a meat-eater, there is no way in heck I can consider African lion meat as an even remotely sustainable choice.

For one, African lions are a pretty vulnerable species. According to the African Wildlife Federation, the big cats number fewer than 50,000 these days, down from 100,000 just two decades ago. I can't justify eating lions in the same way I can't support eating bluefin tuna, or shark, or polar bear (should anyone suddenly decide to eat one). Once an animal's population numbers dip to a certain point, it's crucial to remove the stressors that are causing them to decrease. That includes consumers.

Lion meat found in Il Vinaio's lion burgers isn't actually coming from the African savannah, though. The lions come from a legal (yes, really), lion farm in Illinois. Fallows Farm claims to raise free-range, farm-raised African lions, prompting folks like Il Vinaio's owner, Cameron Selogie, to tout the lions as a sustainable meat choice. But raising a free-range African lion in Illinois doesn't really compare to raising a free-range chicken in Illinois. African lions belong in Africa, in a vastly different ecosystem from America's Midwest.

As Change.org's Stephanie Feldstein points out, farm-raising the animals here in the U.S. can make lion populations in Africa dwindle even more. "When animals such as lions, tigers, and bears are farmed for meat and other body parts, it creates a demand for those products," Feldstein writes. "That demand makes it easy for poachers to slip their illegal products into the market, keeping them in the business of killing wildlife."

Selogie claims he's offering the lion burger for a limited time on Wednesday and Thursday evenings in honor of the World Cup. Let me tell you, Selogie, I live in a pretty culturally diverse neighborhood where World Cup fever is running rampant. And that fever manifests itself in everything from beer-swigging to horn-honking to car-flipping. But I've yet to hear a soccer fan say, "This game really makes me want to sink my teeth into a fat lion burger."

Tell Il Vinaio and Cameron Selogie that selling lion meat is always an unsustainable choice, even during the World Cup. Sign our petition demanding that Selogie remove lion burgers from his menu.

Photo credit: Just chaos via Wikimedia Commons