A local restaurant’s menu has caught the attention of national animal advocates, but there’s some question whether this cat fight’s been resolved or not.
Dave’s Burger and Pizza on Fuller Road opened two months ago serving exotic meats including kangaroo, alligator, llama and rattlesnake. Yet the offering of one specific meat has several animal conservation organizations stirring. The lion burger was once owner Dave Khan’s priciest piece on the menu at $75 and is now offered at $20. But the price isn’t exactly what made the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) based in Washington, D.C., call for Khan to remove the burger from his menu.
“It’s inappropriate,” IFAW D.C. Office Director Jeffrey Flocken said. “Lions are imperiled. Their population has declined over 50 percent in the last 30 years.”
While the other meats on Khan’s menu don’t make the IFAW happy, the group is primarily focused on endangered species and part of its mission includes stopping lion meat from being served in restaurants. Lion meat is legal to sell and consume, yet the process to add the African lion to the U.S. endangered species list is underway at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Lions are a “coveted trophy hunted species,” said Flocken, who added the U.S. is more than 60 percent responsible for the dramatic decline in lion populations. There are only about 30,000 African lions remaining worldwide.
On the hunt
It is not entirely clear whether advocates have gotten their wish in Colonie because Khan has been unclear on whether he’s still offering lion. He was reported as saying he’d stopped selling it shortly after IFAW released its statement, but he told The Spotlight on Thursday, Nov. 29, that he would keep it on the menu.
“I’m not selling it right now because we don’t have it, but it’s in my menu,” Khan said. “I’m not going to take it off my menu, no way. Once I get it I will be selling it again. I get about 10 calls a day asking for lion. I just don’t have it right now.”
Khan said he doesn’t understand why the conservation groups are going after him if the meat he is serving is legal.
“My answer to them is very simple. I am not going out there and hunting anyone. It’s not like we’re going out in the backyard or taking people’s pets. Lion is not even a pet to be honest, what I personally believe. I just buy the packages. I sell them by law,” Khan said. “If you don’t like something, and you feel like that’s not right, you have to go to the resource, not after the person buying it in the package.”
Khan declined to name the supplier of his lion meat, but said he receives it pre-packaged from a local market that currently has a “shortage of lion meat.” He said the meat will not be available at his restaurant until late December or January.
But Vince Walcek, a resident Colonie, said he had little trouble purchasing a lion burger on Friday, Nov. 30, from Dave’s Burger and Pizza. He said it was “weird-flavored” and he did not particularly enjoy it.
“I wanted to try the lion burger. He got kind of nervous and said, ‘OK, but don’t tell anybody because the media’s giving me a hard time,’” Walcek said. “I ended up paying $30 for it. He was saying something about it, how he only has a couple burgers left. He said he couldn’t sell it for $20.”
When asked about the Nov. 30 sale to Walcek, Khan told The Spotlight he had not sold a lion burger for about two months.
The meat of the matter
Serving lion meat, Flocken said, seems to be more a publicity stunt than anything else. He pointed to a Synovate poll that found 63 percent of Americans would not return to a restaurant that served lion meat. Since 2009, the IFAW has successfully convinced eight restaurants around the nation to drop lion meat from their menus.
“We think it’s a fad to offer … exotic burgers from wild animals,” Flocken said. “We see it as a marketing ploy, (an) attention grabber.”
Linda Wolfe, program associate at the advocacy group Born Free USA based in California, said one of the major concerns with serving lion meat is that lions are not raised for human consumption. Wolfe said there is no such thing as a “lion farm” and said the meat often has not been inspected.
“You don’t know what you’re putting in your mouth. There’s no oversight. There’s mislabeling and misleading information,” Wolfe said. “Would you want to eat meat you don’t know where the origins are from? The only way you could say, ‘We get out animals locally’ is if you can cite the source. He can’t cite it.”
Both Wolfe and Flocken said the only “meat market” they have been able to find that sells lion meat is Czimer’s Game & Seafood, a butcher shop in Illinois. Flocken said the proprietor went to jail for buying, killing and selling endangered leopards and tigers and passing them off as legal lion meat. The owner served a short sentence and has returned to the shop — and lion meat has experienced a resurgence, Flocken said.
Why lion?
“Our natural tendency is to kill anything that can kill us. (Lions) are to be respected. They have a role to play. I think it sends the message that these animals are expendable,” said Lois Gundrum, of Watervliet, said.
Gundrum, who is independently concerned about animal welfare, said she called Khan about a month ago asking him to remove the lion burger from his menu, and claimed Khan laughingly told her he didn’t serve lion, but “loin.”
“He was very convincing,” she said.
Gundrum contacted Wolfe after speaking with Khan.
“Obviously he’s a liar. He just lies. First, it was a typo, second it was joke and now he stopped, but really not. You can’t believe what this guy says,” Wolfe said. “Legally, we can’t go after him because he’s not doing anything illegal. But what we can do is educate the people as to why (serving lion meat) is a problem.”
Walcek has been a frequent Dave’s Burger and Pizza customer but doesn’t understand why Khan needs to keep lion burgers on the menu.
“His burgers are really good and he has a unique cooking style. I think people would go in even if he wasn’t selling lion burgers. Just don’t sell the lion burger if it’s going to be an issue,” Walcek said. “No one will really care. No one’s like, dying for lion burgers.”
