Des Houghton: Meet the man who ate the zoo

So you think eating kangaroo, emu or crocodile meat is adventurous. You’ve got nothing on this resourceful researcher, writes Des Houghton.

Imagine heading down to the Brekky Creek Hotel and ordering a big fat juicy … elephant steak.

The thought is not at all repulsive to Louw Hoffman, the new professor of meat science at the University of Queensland.

Professor Louw Hoffman from the University of Queensland.

He’s eaten everything from whales in Norway to a cheetah in Namibia, to Canadian brown bear and African giraffe.

He munched happily on a haunch of a rogue elephant after it was shot at Kruger National Park in South Africa.

“It kept breaking out and going on the rampage and endangering lives,” said 59-year-old Hoffman.

A permit was granted for it to be dispatched, said Hoffman, who arrived in Brisbane recently from Stellenbosch University.

He barbecued the elephant and found it had a coarse texture most unlike beef.

Barbecued elephant had a coarse texture.

He devoured the baby whale after it drowned in a fisherman’s net. “Delicious!” he said.

In retirement, Hoffman plans to pen a book entitled The Man Who Ate the Zoo. Animals were an excellent source of protein, he said.

He hit the headlines recently saying the larvae, or maggots, of the black soldier fly should not be overlooked as a valuable food source.

Whale meat was delicious.

“The larvae is richer in zinc and iron than lean meat, and its calcium content is as high as that of milk,’’ he said.

He especially enjoyed the larvae in sausages minced with a proportion of beef. And one of his students made a maggot ice-cream.

Half a hectare of black soldier fly larvae can produce more protein than cattle grazing on around 1200 hectares, or 52 hectares of soybeans.

“If you care about the environment, then you should consider and be willing to eat insect protein,” he said. Greenies please note.