RABBITS AS FOOD
SIR,—On page 571 of your last week's number you rightly call attention to the gross neglect (by successive Governments) of the rabbit plague, which is responsible for the derelict state of much of our agricultural land. But it is to be hoped that your remark that there are millions of rabbits, which are now pests and might be food, will not encourage the fallacy that rabbits are worth growing for food. During the last War it was laid down for purposes of rationing that rabbit flesh only possessed half the nutritional value of other meat. It should also be borne in mind when comparing rabbit with, say,
mutton that a much smaller percentage of the live weight of the rabbit is edible meat, and, further, that the amount of green food consumed by a sheep will only suffice for about eight rabbits. As the eight rabbits may weigh about forty pounds and the sheep upwards of a hundred pounds, it is easy to realise how disastrously land is wasted when it is occupied by rabbits. From the point of view of food value, the com- parison with beef, cheese and some forms of fish is even more
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