Rack of squirrel, anyone? The chefs putting invasive species on the menu
-‘Invasivorism’ is a growing ethical dining trend but is ‘eat them to beat them’ really the answer?

有人要松鼠颈脊肉吗？厨师们把入侵物种加进了菜单
——“入侵物种吃光主义”是一种日益增长的道德饮食趋势，但“吃掉它们来打败它们”真的是答案吗？
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(Roast rack of squirrel, fondant jersey royal potatoes, carrot and wild garlic served at Paul Wedgwood’s restaurant in Edinburgh, Scotland.)

（苏格兰爱丁堡的保罗·韦奇伍德餐厅里的烤松鼠颈脊肉、方旦糖泽西皇家土豆、胡萝卜和野生大蒜。）
新闻：

From oral contraceptives to proposals to edit their DNA, efforts to control the UK’s invasive grey squirrel population have become increasingly elaborate. But a growing number of chefs and conservationists have a far simpler idea, which they see as part of the trend in ethical dining: eat them.

从口服避孕药到建议编辑它们的DNA，控制入侵英国的灰松鼠数量的努力变得越来越复杂。但越来越多的厨师和环保人士有一个简单得多的想法，他们认为这是道德饮食趋势的一部分：吃掉它们。

“My original starting point with grey squirrel was taste. But it’s also great for the environment,” says Paul Wedgwood, one of Scotland’s leading chefs, whose restaurant on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile has had grey squirrel on the menu since 2008. Wedgwood has even made haggis from the North American rodent that has driven the local extinction of the native red across much of England and Wales.

“我最初烹饪灰松鼠的出发点是口味。但这对环境也很好，”苏格兰顶级厨师之一保罗·韦奇伍德说。他在爱丁堡皇家英里大道的餐厅自2008年以来一直将灰松鼠列入菜单。韦奇伍德甚至用这种北美啮齿动物做杂碎，这种动物导致了英格兰和威尔士大部分地区的本地红松鼠的灭绝。

“It’s mellow, nutty and a bit gamey. It’s just a really nice flavour, and it’s easy to match. Anyone who’s doing rabbit could just easily swap in squirrel,” he says.

“它醇厚、有坚果味，还有点野味。味道很好，很容易搭配。任何烹饪兔子的人都能很容易地切换成松鼠，”他说。

Wedgwood is not alone among chefs putting invasive species on the menu. At Dai Due restaurant in Austin, Texas, owner and chef Jesse Griffiths is encouraging Americans to hunt and eat more of the millions of feral hogs that cause billions of dollars of damage to farmland. In the Bahamas, Michelin-starred chef José Andrés is serving up invasive lionfish to help protect reefs in the Caribbean. At Fallow in London, chefs are planning to cook king crab, the latest arrival on British shores that has sparked fears for native brown crab and scallop populations.

韦奇伍德并不是唯一一个将入侵物种列入菜单的厨师。在德克萨斯州奥斯汀的Dai Due餐厅，老板兼厨师杰西·格里菲斯正在鼓励美国人猎杀和食用数百万头野猪，这些野猪给农田造成了数十亿美元的损失。在巴哈马，米其林星级厨师何塞·安德烈斯正在提供入侵的狮子鱼菜肴，以帮助保护加勒比地区的珊瑚礁。在伦敦的法罗餐厅，厨师们正计划烹制帝王蟹，这种最近抵达英国海岸的螃蟹引发了对本土褐蟹和扇贝种群的生存担忧。

The concept of “invasivorism” was developed more than two decades ago by Joe Roman, a conservation biologist at the University of Vermont. “With this idea, humans are a form of biological control. Humans are amazing predators: whether it’s eating the grey squirrel in Britain or the European green crab in the US, we know eating them can have an impact on populations,” he says.

二十多年前，佛蒙特大学的保护生物学家乔·罗曼提出了“入侵物种吃光主义”的概念。“根据这个想法，人类就是一种生物控制形式。人类是惊人的捕食者：无论是在英国吃灰松鼠还是在美国吃欧洲绿蟹，我们都知道吃掉它们会对种群产生影响，”他说。

The spread of invasive species counts among the major drivers of extinctions and biodiversity loss on Earth, according to leading scientists. Not all non-native organisms become invasive, but those that do spread rapidly and outcompete native wildlife, often due to the absence of predators, causing financial and ecological damage. Examples include mice on Gough Island in the south Atlantic where the rodents eat albatross chicks in their nests, and the Burmese python in Florida’s Everglades, which has devastated mammal populations. Invasive species are also expensive: a Queen’s University Belfast study revealed this week that they have caused £878bn of damage worldwide since the 1960s, a bill set to spiral this century.

据著名科学家称，入侵物种的传播是地球上物种灭绝和生物多样性丧失的主要驱动因素之一。并不是所有的非本地生物都会成为入侵物种，但那些迅速传播并超越本地野生动物的生物（往往是由于缺乏捕食者），造成了经济和生态上的破坏。例子包括南大西洋高夫岛上的老鼠，在那里啮齿动物会吃掉巢穴中的信天翁雏鸟，以及佛罗里达州大沼泽地的缅甸蟒蛇，它们已经摧毁了哺乳动物的数量。入侵物种的代价也很高：贝尔法斯特女王大学本周的一项研究显示，自上世纪60年代以来，它们在全球造成了8780亿英镑的损失，这一数字还将在本世纪上升。

Roman runs the website EatTheInvaders.org, hosting recipes for invasive species in the US that include the green iguana, wakame seaweed and nutria or coypu – a river rat.

罗曼经营着EatTheInvaders.org网站，提供美国入侵物种的食谱，包括绿鬣蜥、裙带菜和海狸鼠或河狸鼠——一种河鼠。

“We need to say from the beginning that the goal is to reduce these populations – not to create a market for them. We don’t want people to say ‘wow, this crayfish is really good. I wish we had it in this river system’ or something like that,” Roman says. “In this time of globalisation, we’re moving animals, plants and fungi around all the time that have ecological impacts. We are trying to work against that.”

“我们需要从一开始就说，我们的目标是减少这些物种数量，而不是为它们创造一个市场。我们不想让人们说‘哇，这小龙虾真好吃。我希望我们在这个河流系统中也有它’或类似的话，”罗曼说。“在这个全球化的时代，我们一直在移动对生态有影响的动物、植物和真菌。我们正在努力反对这种情况。”

Critics are wary of how effective invasivorism can be at achieving its aims, with evidence the “eat them to beat them” approach can have the opposite effect for some species. A 2020 paper on catching invasive signal crayfish populations in North Yorkshire, where Britain’s only native crayfish is being driven out, found that traps were likely ineffective and helped spread the crayfish. Despite the crayfish being promoted by chefs including Gordon Ramsay, the report found that less than 2.5% of invasive crayfish were large enough to be caught in traditional traps, which could harm other creatures.

批评人士对入侵行为在实现其目标方面的有效性持谨慎态度，有证据表明，“吃掉它们来打败它们”的方法对某些物种可能会产生相反的效果。2020年，一篇关于在北约克郡捕捉入侵信号小龙虾种群的论文发现，陷阱可能是无效的，反而还帮助了小龙虾的传播。英国唯一的本土小龙虾正在被赶出北约克郡。尽管包括戈登·拉姆齐在内的厨师都在推广这种小龙虾，但报告发现，只有不到2.5%的入侵小龙虾大到可以用传统的陷阱捕捉，而传统的陷阱可能会伤害到其他生物。

Then there is the question of scale. The Wild Meat Company, which sells game from Suffolk, England, sold about 10,000 grey squirrels last year, hardly enough to dent the population of 2.7 million in the UK.

然后是规模的问题。出售英格兰萨福克野味的野味公司去年卖出了大约1万只灰松鼠，这几乎不足以减少英国270万的物种数量。

In the US, a 2014 review found that while eating invasive species can reduce populations and raise public awareness, it might inadvertently provide disincentives to their eradication. It offered an 11-point strategy for using invasivorism effectively, along with following local laws on harvesting species, which differ around the world.

在美国，2014年的一项研究发现，虽然食用入侵物种可以减少物种数量并提高公众意识，但可能会无意中阻碍它们的根除。它提出了有效利用入侵行为的11点策略，以及遵循世界各地不同的当地物种捕获法律。

While proponents acknowledge it is not possible to turn all invasive flora and fauna into gourmet food, they say that taste is key to success.

虽然支持者承认不可能把所有入侵的动植物都变成美食，但他们说味道是成功的关键。

At Miya’s, a sustainable sushi restaurant in New Haven, Connecticut, head chef Bun Lai developed a dedicated invasive species menu and won the White House champions of change award in 2016 for his sustainable food.

在康涅狄格州纽黑文的可持续寿司餐厅Miya 's，主厨Bun Lai开发了一份专门的入侵物种菜单，并因其可持续食物获得了2016年白宫变革冠军奖。
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“If we ate invasive animals such as boar and nutria instead of cows, we would have a significant impact on climate change because of their greenhouse gas emissions,” says Lai, who now runs sustainable sushi pop-ups after the closure of the restaurant in 2021.

Lai说：“如果我们吃野猪和海狸鼠等入侵动物，而不是奶牛，我们将对气候变化产生重大影响，因为奶牛会排放温室气体。”他在2021年关闭餐厅后，现在经营着可持续寿司店。

“From a swamp rodent called nutria to python, poisonous cane toad and a plethora of invasive plants, I have hunted, fished and foraged many invasive species. People’s tastes are constantly changing,” he says. “In my sushi platters for decades, I’d include non-conventional ingredients. Rather than tuna, farmed salmon, eel, and yellowtail, I’d use invasive carp with black soldier fly larvae, invasive blue catfish, invasive lionfish, edible weeds, invasive plants, and organic vegetables and fruit. For years, people would tell me every day that the sushi I was making wasn’t sushi, but over time it became more accepted.”

“从一种叫做海狸鼠的沼泽啮齿动物到蟒蛇、有毒的甘蔗蟾蜍和大量的入侵植物，我猎杀、捕捞和觅食了许多入侵物种。人们的口味在不断变化，”他说。“几十年来，在我的寿司拼盘里，我都会加入非传统的食材。我不会使用金枪鱼、养殖鲑鱼、鳗鱼和黄尾鱼，而是使用带有黑兵蝇幼虫的入侵鲤鱼、入侵蓝鲶、入侵狮子鱼、可食用杂草、入侵植物和有机蔬菜和水果。多年来，人们每天都会告诉我，我做的寿司不是寿司，但随着时间的推移，它被越来越多的人接受了。”

In the UK, time will tell whether Japanese knotweed vodka and muntjac deer burgers become part of the measures to limit invasive species. Not all invasive animals are classed as game, and therefore the public is not free to shoot, trap and consume every invasive species. But for fine diners in Scotland, grey squirrel, which it is legal to kill humanely, is already a firm favourite.

在英国，时间将证明日本虎杖伏特加和麂鹿汉堡是否会成为限制入侵物种措施的一部分。并不是所有的入侵动物都被归类为猎物，因此公众不能随意射杀、诱捕和消耗每一种入侵物种。但对于苏格兰的高级食客来说，人道地杀死灰松鼠是合法的，它已经是他们的最爱了。

“The demand is there from customers,” says Wedgwood. “I had a guy fly in from Switzerland who ordered a squirrel tasting menu. A six-course menu … just with squirrel!”

“需求来自于客户，”韦奇伍德说。“有个家伙从瑞士飞过来，点了一份松鼠品尝菜单。一份六道菜的菜单……只有松鼠！”

Squirrel rack, confit jersey royal potatoes, carrot puree, wild garlic
Recipe by Paul Wedgwood

松鼠颈脊肉，油炸泽西皇家土豆，胡萝卜泥，野蒜
保罗·韦奇伍德的食谱

2 squirrel racks – room temperature
2 jersey royal potatoes
1 clove garlic
1 sprig rosemary
500ml goose fat
1 large carrot
50g butter, diced in small pieces
2 wild garlic leaves
50ml oil
Salt and pepper

2块松鼠颈脊肉——室温
2个泽西皇家土豆
1瓣大蒜
1枝迷迭香
500ml鹅油
1个大胡萝卜
50克黄油，切成小块
2片野蒜叶
50毫升油
盐和胡椒

Peel the potatoes and gently fry in a little goose fat to add colour. Transfer to a small saucepan, add the garlic and rosemary and enough goose fat to cover the potatoes. Place on a medium heat. Bring the fat to a simmer, reduce the heat and gently simmer for about 30 minutes or until the potatoes are soft and cooked through.

把土豆削皮，用一点鹅油轻轻炒一下，增加色泽。转移到一个小炖锅，加入大蒜和迷迭香和足够的鹅油覆盖土豆。中火加热。加鹅油调小火，小火炖30分钟左右，或者直到土豆变软煮透。

Peel the carrot and slice. Place in a small pan with a little salt and cover with water. Bring to the boil and cook until the carrot is soft. Drain and reserve the cooking liquor. Using a hand blender, blitz the carrot with the diced butter and season with salt and white pepper. Adjust the consistency if required with the cooking liquor and leave somewhere warm.

胡萝卜去皮切片。放在一个小锅里，加一点盐，加水浸没。煮至胡萝卜变软。沥干备用。用手动搅拌器，把胡萝卜和黄油丁搅碎，用盐和白胡椒粉调味。如果需要，可以用蒸煮液调整稠度，然后放在温暖的地方。
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Blitz the wild garlic with the oil and pass through a fine sieve.

将野蒜与油混合，过筛。

In a small frying pan, take two spoonfuls of the potato confit fat and heat until it is just beginning to smoke. Turn the heat down slightly and carefully add the squirrel racks and baste for about two minutes. Remove the racks from the pan, season with salt and pepper, and leave somewhere warm.

取一个小煎锅，放两勺土豆油，加热，直到它开始冒烟。把火调小一点，小心地加入松鼠颈脊肉和黄油，煮大约两分钟。把颈脊肉从锅里取出，用盐和胡椒调味，放在温暖的地方。

Add a spoonful of the carrot puree to a plate, remove the potatoes from the fat and place on an absorbent cloth for a few seconds. Season with salt, then add to the plate. Place the squirrel rack on top and drizzle with wild garlic oil.

在盘子里加入一勺胡萝卜泥，将土豆从鹅油中取出，放在吸水布上几秒钟。用盐调味，然后放入盘中。把松鼠颈脊肉放在上面，淋上野蒜油。

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