"Janet Baraclough" wrote in message
...
The message .com
from "John" contains these words:


Are the pigeons in urban gardens just as edible as those in the
butchers or could there be a problem with the amount of lice etc on
them, and their diet of waste?

Don't be such a wuss.

If you eat salmon, beef, poultry, game or lamb, you are already
eating creatures that have had lice, gut parasites etc, and you haven't
died yet; though the chemical treatments UK produce got for those
parasites might not do you much good. If you are lucky enough to eat
home-grown free-range poultry or their eggs, that wonderful flavour
comes partly from the scraps, or household waste, they eat, and the
animal manures they pick through. If you eat wild sea fish like
inshore mackerel you'd better not ask what they feed on that makes them
so tasty...

If you eat cheap supermarket "bargain price" poultry or pork raised
butchered and imported from barely-regulated farms in east Europe or the
far east then you could be risking far more than anything that afflicts
an urban UK pigeon

Hurrah!

Mary