SHREVEPORT, LA (KSLA) -
State lawmakers are drafting legislation to ensure deer meat can be donated and served at local shelters. The legislation comes after an incident in January at a local shelter where a state health inspector ordered staff to throw away 1,600 lbs. of deer meat.
"They kill an animal for that, and now that animal goes to waste," says Dalton Walker. Walker is an avid hunter who disagrees with the meat being thrown out at the Shreveport-Bossier Rescue Mission.
According to staff at the Rescue Mission, an inspector with the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals ordered staff to throw the meat in a dumpster and pour bleach on the meat.
In a statement released on the D-H-H Facebook page the group says,
"Because the meat was potentially unsafe, our health inspectors ordered it destroyed, in accordance with the law."
"It seemed like a complete waste of the meat, and government bureaucracy at its worst," says State Rep. Jeff Thompson, District 8.
Thompson says he is working to draft legislation to ensure deer meat can be labeled and verified as edible before being given to the shelter.
"There's not going to be any other meat taken from any other shelter in Louisiana and destroyed," says Thompson.
Since this incident, the Shreveport-Bossier Rescue Mission has received donations including 16 hundred pounds of chicken from Foster Farms and thousands in charitable contributions.
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