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Figure 2: Mean amount (g) of gamebird meat eaten per individual
per day averaged over a 4-day diet diary survey period for those
individuals who ate some gamebird meat during the diary
period. Data are from surveys conducted as part of the UK National
Diet and Nutrition Survey in the years 2008/09 -2011/12. Amounts eaten
per day are loge-transformed and shown in relation to age. Each symbol
represents the datum from one individual. Results for males are shown
by triangles and those for females by circles.
0
1
2
3
4
5
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
Amount (g/d)
Age (years)
An independent check on the
quantity of gamebird meat
consumed annually in the UK
Numbers of wild gamebirds and waterfowl shot in the UK in
2004 are given in PACEC (2006) as just under 19 million, of
which about 79% were pheasants Phasianus colchicus . This
total excludes woodpigeons Columba palumbus, which PACEC
(2006) treats as pests, rather than game. Results from game
bag records collected by the Game and Wildlife Conservation
Trust and presented by Aebischer (2013), show that numbers
of pheasant, red-legged partridge Alectoris rufa, grey partridge
Perdix perdix and mallard Anas platyrhynchos shot in 2011
were 12 – 23% higher than they were in 2004, with the scale
of increase varying among the four species. Because of the
preponderance of pheasants in the national bag of gamebirds
and waterfowl, we took the value for the 2004 – 2011 increase
in bag of this species (12%) to represent the recent increase in
bag for all gamebirds and waterfowl combined. Multiplying
by the 2004 total of 19 million gives an estimated UK total for
2011 of 21.3 million gamebirds and waterfowl shot, excluding
woodpigeons. PACEC (2006) reports that 3.6 million pigeons
were shot, ‘not as part of a job’, in 2004 and that 53% of the
total number of pigeons shot were killed not as part of a job.
Hence, the estimated total number of pigeons shot is 6.8million.
Adding these to the total of other birds shot and assuming
that the 2004 pigeon total also applies to 2011, gives a total of
28.1 million birds shot in 2011. This is a conservative estimate
because we used the lowest of the four species estimates of
the 2004 – 2011 increase in bag. Multiplying the species totals
by mean body weights (from Snow and Perrins 1998) gives a
total of 25,400 tonnes for the total annual weight of the bag
of these quarry bird species. PACEC (2006) reported that 99%
of the gamebirds and waterfowl and 90% of the pigeons were
intended for human consumption. Using these proportions
we estimated that the total annual unprocessed intact weight
of gamebirds, waterfowl and pigeons intended for human
consumption was 24,700 tonnes, derived from 27.3 million
individual wild-shot birds. It seems probable that some of these
birds were not used as food in the UK because their carcasses
were rejected or because they were exported. The proportions
of birds rejected and exported are unknown, as is the extent to
which exports were compensated for by imports.
We estimated the mean weight of unprocessed gamebird
carcasses required for a serving of a main course game
meal using recipes published on the internet by the British
Broadcasting Corporation (BBC n.d.). We used the number of
birds required by the recipe and converted this into the weight
of unprocessed bird carcasses required using body weights from
Snow and Perrins (1998). In doing this, we took into account
whether male or female birds were specified. We divided the
total unprocessed weight of game required by the recipe by
the number of portions this was said to provide. We avoided
recipes which did not use the whole bird. We found ten eligible
recipes for galliform gamebird meals (four pheasant, three
partridge, three grouse Lagopus lagopus). The mean weight of
unprocessed carcass per served portion was 499 g (1 SE = 56 g).
Assumed values for the mass of a typical gamebird meal for an
adult vary widely. EFSA (2010) assumed that an adult portion of
game meat was 200 g, whereas FSA (2002) gives a value of 100
g. This suggests that between 20% and 40% of the unprocessed
weight of a gamebird used for food is present in the resulting
meal. Hence, based upon estimates of the numbers of wild-shot
birds, we calculate that between 0.2 x 24,700 = 4,940 tonnes and
0.4 x 24,700 = 9,880 tonnes of gamebird meat has been eaten
by UK consumers annually in recent years. This range overlaps
the confidence interval of the value of 11,232 tonnes per year
(95% C.L. 9,162 – 16,251) obtained from the gamebird meat
consumption reported in the diet diary surveys from the NDNS.
Rhys E. Green & Deborah J. Pain