Giant Rabbits To Feed North Korea

iamdrscience writes with news of an East German pensioner who breeds rabbits the size of dogs. Karl Szmolinsky won a prize for breeding Germany's largest rabbit, at 23 lbs., in 2006. News photos reached the North Koreans, who asked through their embassy whether Szmolinsky would be willing to sell them some as foodstocks — each rabbit yields about 15 lb. of meat. A deal was struck and Szmolinsky will be traveling to North Korea in April to help them set up a breeding program. (The photos in the article use the most extreme, contrived camera angles to make the rabbits look even more huge.)

Help the poor North Koreans?

[argoff]

If he thinks that he is going to help the poor starving North Koreans, he will probably be in for the shock of his life. It will probably be for the rich ruling class, or even worse the elite may suffer from poor aim when they go out hunting rabits for sport.

If Korea is really concerned about starvation, they should look at their neighbor China. China went from a disaster of 10's of millions of starving people to total solution almost immediately. How did they do it? They let the farmers have private property rights.

Re:May I be the first to say...

[drgonzo59]

Having grown in Soviet Union, I'll attest to the fact. No matter how many resources the government will have, no matter how much the technology progresses, it will all get mis-managed, wasted and funneled into militarization. The price of the human life is very low.

But I gotta give them credit, at least they got the right idea about how to properly run a communist country -- fear! Stalin style (yeah, I like the alliteration, just came up with it!) People will obey when they see their neighbors in the evening and by morning the secret police have taken them away because someone made up a lie about them being "enemies of the people." I am not making this up, this happened to families I knew personally, this is how things are in NK.

Re:Long term effects?

[ScentCone]

I don't know the technical name for it, but eating the ultra lean rabbit meat is known to cause malnutrition and eventual poisoning and death.

But see, the thing is... the average Kim Joe in NK is already starving/malnurished. The place is a culinary hell-hole, that way. The Stalinst way they run their agriculture is having (shocking!) the same results that it did under Stalin: mass starvation and death, unless you're in the military. Eeesh, what a place. And the people there seem to really believe that they're about to be attacked by the rest of the world (or, the US, anyway), and that their current suffering is just part of their war-posture sacrifice. Incredible what the in-house propoganda machine can get away with in the complete absense of a free press, anything like modern media, and anyone who might tell it like it is fearing for their lives.

Re:Seems like a make-work project...

[TubeSteak]

Why don't the North Koreans just continue to eat dogs?

Because the fashion industry doesn't like to admit to selling products made out of dog fur.
really, they don't [google.com]

Re:Here is why this is a bad idea

[jimicus]

It's already happened:

http://imdb.com/title/tt0312004/ [imdb.com]

Why did you convert the units?

[HvitRavn]

TFA uses metric units, but the slashdot machinery has for some reason converted it to imperial units. Why?

Absolutely crazy, disaster waiting to happen

[AlzaF]

How many kilograms of food will be needed to feed each rabbit need to produce the 7 kilograms of rabbit meat? There is also a possibility of an ecological disaster waiting to happen in the form of an explosion of the rabbit population due to its large reproductive nature. If they got into the wild, they would strip the land of any agriculture left and the people would be far worse off than there are now. The same thing happened when rabbits were introduced to Australia. The best solution is for North Korea to stop feeding it's military machine and feed it's people.

Re:Were's the beef?

[maxwell demon]

Of course, the question is: The size of which dog? After all, there's a huge size difference between dogs [wikipedia.org] and dogs! [wikipedia.org]

Brilliant !

[Joebert]

Giant Rabbits To Feed North Korea

In the future, they'll be able to reuse 97% of that headline.

Giant Rabbits Feed On North Korea

"The Aquariums of Pyongyang"

[nadanumber]

North Korea uses prisoners in their various prison camps to breed rabbits, which are killed for meat. (not for the prisoners, who must eat bugs, worms, raw rats, etc. in order to survive) Kang Chol-Hwan who was imprisoned with his entire family in the 'redeeemables' area of the Yodok prison camp wrote a book that describes his experiences, "The Aquariums of Pyongyang". For anyone interested in North Korean human rights, its a must read. Kang Chol-Hwan is now a reporter for the South Korean newspaper the Chosun Ilbo on North Korean affairs. He's one of the most successful North Korean refugees living in South Korea.

Most North Korean refugees who manage to escape into China lead hunted lives in a terrible limbo of exploitation, terrified that they may be returned to North Korea, where people are often executed for the crime of trying to leave the country and bringing shame upon the Dear Leader.

If you read Aquariums realize that Kang Chol-Hwan's nine years in the Yodok prison camp as a boy were in the least brutal area of the least brutal camp, the only area where people are ever released. Many are sentenced to work on secret underground projects, similar to Hitler's rocket works at Peeneemunde, that only offer death through overwork as an escape, once you go in, you never come out.

Sun Ok-Lee is a North Korean refugee living in the US who worked as a bookeeper in another slave labor camp and her account to the US House is probably the most realistic account of these camps. She is one of less than five people known to have ever left one and lived.. Thousands die each year in these camps. They work people to death. (Each person, and their fat, represents useful energy to be extracted before killing them, as you will see)

Her account is at http://ncafe.com/northkorea/SunOkLeeTestimony_w_ll us.pdf [ncafe.com]

Uh, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Its trivially easy to get everything except vitamin b12 from a vegetarian diet. Fats and oils are the same thing, and you know that "vegetable oil" stuff people fry food in, guess where it comes from? Flax oil is great for omega 3, you don't need fish. Iron isn't an issue, legumes, green leafy vegetables, whole grain products like breads are all high in iron, and just cooking in cast iron cookware provides all the iron you need even if your food had none. Every vitamin and mineral besides b12 has great plant sources. And protein is a non-issue, even the vegetables with the lowest protein content still have plenty enough. If you are eating enough calories to maintain your weight, you will get enough protein too. Oddly enough, protein would be a problem trying to rely too heavily on rabbit meat. The amino acid ratio in rabbit meat is WAY off for people, you will actually die if you try to live off rabbit meat as your sole protein source.

For lazy people

[bioglaze]

23 lbs = 10.4 kilograms
15 lbs = 6.8 kilograms

Re:Rabbit Starvation

[ArtuRocks]

Les Stroud talked about this on an episode of Survivorman [discovery.com]; what you're supposed to do to avoid rabbit starvation is eat the entire rabbit, from top to bottom, bones, eyes, brains, etc (but not the fur).

Re:May I be the first to say...

[darjen]

Such comments are really nothing but an insult to people who actually did live in Communist Russia. I know some of them, myself, and likening the United States to Soviet Russia is such a laughable comparison that you should be ashamed. Many of these people used basically all the money they had to move to countries like the US.

I think the point is that, sadly enough, people in America really aren't as free as they are led to believe. I tend to agree. This is not an insult to anyone who sacrificed to come here. They wanted to be in a more relatively free country. But unfortunately, the US is becoming more and more like the situation they tried to leave. Having the right to oppose the government, though it might be an improvement, still doesn't mean too much if you are forced to fund them.

Re:Rabbits can be a worthwhile food source

[plopez]

Something for both you and tapecutter.

http://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/othrwhtmea t/2.html [lileks.com]

BTW, if you haven't seen the 'Gallery of Regrettable Food', it's great.

Re:May I be the first to say...

[toddhisattva]

The people are in Guantanamo because America is great.

If we were not such a bunch of great people, they would be dead.

We don't need to take prisoners. Shoot 'em in the field! No muss, no fuss, no fourth estate or fifth column parading them around as innocents.

But we took prisoners, and for this we are hated.