Introduction

Meat can be considered as a prime food for humans since it serves to produce energy for production of new organic tissues and regulation of physiological processes in our body with the help of its protein, fat and vitamin constituents. The greatest benefits of meat nutrition are quality and quantity of amino acids in the muscles, importance of iron content, and essential fatty acids and vitamin B complex it provides.

Although meat has enjoyed sustained popularity as a foodstuff, in recent years consumers have expressed growing concern over some consequences of meat consumption and production. These include nutrition-related diseases, such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes, associated with the over-consumption of animal fats. USDA (2007) mentioned that over-consumption of meat may be responsible for a quarter of all ischemic heart disease, or 1.8 million deaths, annually. Food borne pathogens found in meats, such as Salmonella, Campylobacter, pathogenic E. coli, Avian influenza, and Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). In the United States, food borne diseases — the most common causes of which are contaminated meats — are responsible for over 76 million episodes of illness, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths each year (USDA, 20O7). In the United States, alone, the annual medical costs related to over-consumption of meat are believed to be between $30 and 60 billion (USDA 20O7). Together with animal feed production, meat production is responsible for the emissions of nitrogen and phosphorus, pesticide contamination of water, heavy metal contamination of soil, and acid rain from ammonia emissions (USDA 2007).

A number of studies on the nutritional value of wild animal meat indicate that bushmeat is comparable if not better than domestic meat (Ajayi & Tewe 1979, Malaisse & Parent 1982). The general trend is that the meat of most wild animal species tends to be low in fat, while equal or better than beef, mutton, chicken or pork in protein content and much higher in vitamin content (Tables 1 and 2). Apart from the large game species, nutritional studies on wild animals have been carried out for non-conventional species such as rodents, insects and snails. Nutritional studies of rodents used as food in the Zambezian woodland gave average protein content of 24% (fresh weight); fat content of 2.816.8% and ash consent of about 1.5% for twelve species (Malaise and Parent, 1982). Based on these results, the nutritive value of rodents’ places them on the same level as beef and chicken (Table 1).

Several species of insects used for food in Africa have high protein and calorific value (Hickin, 1971). Larvae of the silkworm Anaphe venata, which is used extensively for food in rural Nigeria, was found to contain more crude protein than other animal sources such as lamb and pork. The iron (Fe) content was superior to chicken and the larvae also contained six of the eight amino acids essential to the human body, threonine, valine, isoleucine, leucine, phenyl-alanine and lysine, thus making them useful supplement to protein and mineral deficient diets (Ashiru, 1988). With a fat content of only 1.3 % and iron content of 12.2 mg/100g in edible carcass, the nutritive value of snails is reported to be comparable to that of domestic livestock (Ajayi et al., 1978).

Comparative Advantages of Bushmeats

In a closer look at the proximate composition of common species of wild animals species consumed as bushmeats with a similar (taxonomically) domesticated breeds (Figure 1, 2 and 3), it can be deduced that conventional meats are generally higher in percentage moisture content except in Figure 1 where the percentage moisture content of Red River Hog (72.6%) is higher than that of Pig meat (Pork at 65.9%). Also percentage fat content is found to be higher in conventional meats except in Figure 2, where the percentage fat content of Bush buck (10.9%) is higher than that of Sheep (Mutton at 2.9%). In addition, investigations also show that bushmeats have comparative advantages of higher percentage protein and ash content (Figure 1, 2, 3 and 4).