Indigeneity, Alienness and cuisine: Are Trout South African

Abstract

Man has been defined as a rational animal, a laughing animal, a tool-using animal and so on. We would be touching upon a deep truth about him, however, if we called him a cooking animal.‘Trout Still on the Menu’ announced a recent newspaper report in South Africa on the proposed classification of trout as invasive alien species in terms of the National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act of 2004 (Yeld, 2014). The report was responding to an apparent softening of its position on trout by the Department of Environmental Affairs. The headline is actually both ironic and suggestive. It is ironic as most fly-fishers who pursue trout nowadays practise catch-and-release, and rarely put the trout they catch ‘on the menu’ (though the trout were certainly introduced initially as both food source and recreational angling species, more on which has been dealt with below).