Offal and bone marrow sources

Question
QUESTION: Hi Geoff,

I am moving to Frimley, near London, about a month from now.  My
daughter's diet is predominantly offal, fat and just a bit of muscle meat.  I
have been reading through your blog and your previous answers re sources of
meat.  Thank you, great information.  Do you have any specific farmers who
sell grass fed offal and marrow?  Could you pass them on?  

Much appreciate all the information and advice.  

Regards,

Aargi

ANSWER: I'm afraid I can't give you details of specific farmers for suet/marrow as, like most RAFers(raw Animal Foodists) in the UK, I only have access to small-time organic, grassfed farmers who slaughter perhaps 1 or 2 animals every few weeks/months, so if I gave you those details, my own, already very meagre order would be halved, if I gave them to a third person, I'd get a mere third etc.! Plus even my own sources tend to change very frequently as the farms move to different farmers' markets or farms discontinue selling organs except locally or due to seasonal issues.

Here's a previous post which covers the main methods re finding raw animal food sources in the UK:-

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Special-Diets-768/2008/5/Raw-Beef-UK.htm


There's also http://www.farmersmarkets.net/

My own main source is the London Farmers' Market as it provides me with things like wild hare carcasses, extra-large wildcaught raw oysters etc.

You;ll be able to get organs like hearts, liver, kidney and tongue relatively easily from grassfed farms(many easily findable via googling your nearest local counties). Farmers' markets also offer them, but you usually have to pre-order them in advance by going straight to the stall and asking about availability. Brains are extremely difficult to get hold of, being technically illegal. I got pigs' brains, a couple of years back(not ideal as pigs are fed on crappy grain diets).

Farms offering raw suet/raw marrow are in a distinct minority. - this generally involves phoning/e-mailing a couple hundred grassfed/organic farms, found online, until one finds a reliable source. Recently, I have come to the conclusion that this is all a bit of a waste of time, and am wondering if it might be just so much easier to get in touch with any UK online groups dealing with raw animal food diets for dogs(either BARF or prey-model) to find acceptable organic or free-range sources, as dog-owners are the main buyers of marrow(and indeed offal).


By the way, re mention of eating mostly offal:- I should mention that my main interest in promoting raw organs over raw muscle-meats in the early part of volunteering for this website, was that Aajonus didn't promote raw organ-meats enough, and because some people start this diet with digestive systems completely wrecked after years of eating cooked foods and often find that raw organ-meats are much easier to digest than raw muscle-meats. These days, however, I'm a bit more laid back re this issue. I still think it's essential to eat organ-meats in as wide a variety as possible in order to improve the health of the relevant organs in one's own body(after all hunter-gatherers would generally eat the whole animal), but I don't consider it necessary to eat mostly raw offal, these days.





---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Geoff, thank you very much for replying in such detail.  My daughter is still
not completely raw, still rare.  Her gut has been in very bad shape so I am
having to take it slow.  Btw, when I say offal, I also include tongue, cheeks,
mountain oysters etc.  Is this the norm there as well?  

I did not realize that it was easier to digest raw organ meats than muscle?  
Any particular one to start with?  

Completely understand your postition regarding sharing sources, will do
some phone tracking myself.  Given that there are certainly more marrow
bones than offal in any given animal, why is it so difficult to obtain them
there?  I just can't figure that one out.  

I have generally been staying away from seafood of all sorts due to mercury
and pcb contamination.  What are your thoughts on this?  Have wondered
about wild freshwater fish.  

Much appreciate your input.  

Aargi

Answer
Offal, as a term, pretty much includes everything but the muscle-meats and bones, so tongue, mountain oysters and cheeks are considered offal.

Re digestion of organ-meats:- I was speaking generally. I would assume that the softer organ-meats like raw liver and raw kidney would be more easily digestible than solid organ-meats like raw tongue. I, on the other hand, found raw tongue to be just as easily digested.

Re marrow:- It's not in any demand, given the modern British phobia re eating organ-meats, so farmers are forced to sell marrow-bones at a very cheap rate, and, given that they are forced by the EU to pay twice over, per hour, for inspection of the animal after slaughter, they mostly prefer to just sell the muscle-meats and throw away much of the offal.


Re mercury-seafood:- Well, some people in the various raw animal food groups are very passionate about the whole mercury busines. I, however, am a serious sceptic. The arguments used re mercury toxicity are highly dubious, given that mercury is present in trace amounts in the air/soil/water all over the world, just like any other element, and the amounts of mercury in Nature that comes from man-made sources is absolutely microscopic by comparison to natural sources of mercury. If it were, indeed, true that mercury was so poisonous even in trace amounts, then one would have to assume that all wild fish and shellfish had severe neurological side-effects, which just isn't the case.

Here is 1 website which debunks the more dodgy aspects of the whole mercury-in-fish hype. It mentions that it's mainly environmentalists and animal-rightists who promote this issue:-

http://fishscam.com/mercuryMyths.cfm

Here is the definite Seychelles study(still ongoing), which shows that children in the Seychelles, who eat 10 times as many fish as Americans do each year, did not suffer from any neurlogical side-effects.Ironically, the study even showed tha the higher the levels of mercury, the better the children did in tests!

http://www.rochester.edu/pr/releases/med/mercury.htm

Aajonus seems to think badly of freshwater fish, viewing them as existing in polluted waters, mostly. I only buy deep-sea fish, so have no idea, but would assume that most river-fish are farmed(?)

HTH,
RPG.  

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