In 1934, in the woods around Eddersee Lake, someone released two pairs of raccoons. These were not good times for Germany, but improving the country’s ‘offer’ of reserves seemed like a good idea.
Spoiler: It wasn’t.
After all, because they were not alone. Eleven years later, 25 raccoons escaped from a fur farm in the province of Brandenburg. From these 29 raccoons came the nearly two million raccoons living in the country today.
They’ve become a real pest, but now some Germans have an idea: eat them.
Do you eat them? Indeed. In 2025, chef Stephan Hasengier of Zum Lindenneck in Weimar put raccoon permanently on the menu: a €17.50 burger and leg. Klösse At 25-30. A hunter delivers up to 20 animals a month, already skinned and certified Trichinella.
This may sound strange, but it is not. On April 18, 2026, the restaurant held what was probably the first German course dedicated to this meat: there were about 70 applications for 20 places.
Sounds good, yes. But this is not to say that a plate is not a control scheme.
Perspective issues. To put all the statistics on the table, in the hunting year that was April 2024 to March 2025, the German Hunting Federation (DJV) recorded 284,220 dead raccoons, including those captured and shot. This is a historical record and yet the population has not declined.
And it’s boring. Because 284,220 is about 16% of Germany’s raccoon population. If the population is not declining, it is being replaced at an equal or greater rate.
But… it’s a lot of food! Well, not so much. According to Saxony-Anhalt butcher Michael Reiss, each animal produces between 1.5 and 2.5 kilos, for which fixed costs exceed 25 euros: about 14 for the trichina analysis, the inspection fee and 10 for the hunter. This leaves upwards of 10 to 17 euros per kilo.
And even if we could use it, it would only be 570 tons of meat. In red crab alone, Andalusia catches five times more annually.
But the concept is slightly different. Haaßengier, who is a vegetarian in his personal life, proposed this as a way to take advantage of what should be hunted for population control.
But the proposal goes a bit further: There are many species that are a problem (raccoon, coypu, blue goose and Canadian barnacle are already eaten in Germany and appear in the Spanish catalog of invasive exotic species), but they do not have much place in public opinion. Maybe putting them on our plates is the way to break that.
Picture | Simon Infanger
In Xataka | For the first time in thousands of years, we’re seeing the domestication process of a species directly and directly: that of raccoons.
