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[This Just In]

BIG BIRDS
What’s for dinner?

BY NINA WILLDORF

Emu’s back. Not that many of us knew it had ever been here in the first place. The ostrich-like bird flew onto the radar screen briefly during the early 1990s, when it was touted as the Next Big Thing in healthy eating — and agricultural entrepreneurs flocked to make a killing on the Australian fowl. Despite Zone Diet guru Barry Sears’s promotion of emu as a healthy alternative to red meat, sales never took flight. But flailing emu farmers note a recent development even meatier than the fat-free fascism of the ’90s that should beef up demand for their birds: foot-and-mouth disease.

“All the emu farmers have been secretly hoping that if this unfortunate thing did happen, there would be a need for some of this meat,” admits Earl Willcott, whose Norton farm switched from nursery stock of plants and bulbs to emu in 1994. Asked about sales of emu over the years, he sneers, “Have you ever heard of emu before? That’s how sales have been.” But these days, alarming reports of diseased cloven-hoofed animals overseas have been money in the bank for Willcott. “Sales have been doing much better now,” he says.

Jeri Johnson, who operates an emu farm in Gill, on Route 2, is a little more cautious but equally optimistic. She and her husband sank $30,000 into a farm for the flightless birds when they “saw something on the TV” in 1995, with less-than-satisfying results. “We haven’t seen an increase yet, but I expect that it will happen,” she says, her voice wavering.

Some are putting their mouths where their money is. Farmers’ dreams of hitting it big are being fed by the Dallas-based American Emu Association, sponsor of the Emu Awareness Week, which ends this Sunday. The industry group’s executive director, Margaret Pounder, thinly veils her eagerness, boasting of 20 to 30 percent increases in sales just in the past month. “We’re seeing a tremendous increase in sales. We’ve had quite a few inquiries from Europe,” she says, before adding, diplomatically, “This is not something that we’re trying to take advantage of. We’re trying to help.”

For all the big bird talk, local retailers aren’t seeing the pet project deliver. “We’ve had no decline in beef sales at all,” says Theresa Bonar, the CEO of Savenor’s Market, a gourmet grocery on Charles Street that offers a variety of “specialty” meats. Though the store stocks ostrich, alligator, zebra, buffalo, wild boar, and emu, it keeps the amounts to a minimum: “None of our exotics are huge sellers.” And she doesn’t expect them to be. “People come in and ask lots of questions, looking for information,” she explains. “As soon as they hear that none our beef is imported, it seems to calm a lot of their fears.”

So even though the promise of disease killing off the competition has emu farmers salivating, national beef retailers needn’t fret about yielding plate space. For now, at least, it doesn’t look as if emu will be “what’s for dinner.”

Issue Date: April 12 - 19, 2001