Attorney Fred Pritzker was quoted in the November 2013 edition of the American Bar Association Journal (ABA Journal). The article, “It’s What’s for Dinner: Montana legalizes the consumption of roadkill“, discussed Montana’s recent legalization of the consumption of roadkill.
Later this month, if someone finds roadkill on a Montana road, they can legally take it for eating, as long as they then get a free permit from a state peace officer within 24 hours, according to the ABA Journal article. Alaska, Georgia and Illinois have similar laws. Some laws allow primarily charitable organizations to serve the roadkill, according to the article.
Fred, nationally recognized for his work in food safety litigation, was quoted in the article:
According to Fred Pritzker, a food safety lawyer from Minneapolis, Montana’s law and others like it are ill-conceived. “Eating an animal killed by blunt-force trauma, with no information about its pre-existing health or provenance and with no information as to how long it’s been dead or the conditions in which it’s been held since death, is a prescription for danger,” he says, referring to what he calls “ubiquitous pathogens,” including E. coli, listeria and salmonella. “The longer one waits to dress and safety store once-fresh meat, the unhealthier it becomes.”
Despite good intentions, laws that are particularly targeted to enable charitable organizations to serve roadkill are actually “highly discriminatory”, says Pritzker. “It essentially says that if you’re poor and dependent on food banks, you should not expect the same level of food safety that the rest of us expect. Think about the risk of harm if the party harvesting the roadkill has no scientific training, has no safety systems, has no clean and safe environment to dress and store the meat. This is an absolute prescription for disaster.”
Fred helps people diagnosed with botulism and infections caused by Campylobacter, E. coli, Listeria, Salmonella, Shigella and Vibrio.