Students being taught to cook roadkill for dinner to stave off debts

With university fees set to rocket, even humble beans on toast might be a stretch for hard-up students. Perhaps one group of young scholars has the answer – roadkill.

As part of a degree course, they are scraping up the remains of pheasants, rabbits and even, in one case, a deer, off the roads and learning how to butcher them. What’s left over, they take home to eat. A staff member who has worked at their university for almost ten years said: ‘The group would find all sorts of animals at the side of the road.



‘They were used for class demonstrations to show how butchering methods have developed throughout history. But, after the lesson, we’d be left with piles of meat – so we’d have a barbecue.’ Students at Bournemouth University said the sessions left them scrambling to find more roadkill in their own time.

One, a 23-year-old studying forensic archaeology, said: ‘After a few bites, I forgot I was eating an animal that had its brains smashed in by a car.’ Steve Stone, environmental health officer for the New Forest District Council, said anyone eating roadkill should make sure they were aware of the risks they were taking, adding: ‘I don’t think it’s something that people should experiment with unless they are aware of the health of the animal and the condition of it.’