Facebook Founder's Year of Eating Only Self-harvested Meat

by Agnieszka Spieszny

Outdoor Hub Reporter

Mark Zuckerberg, best known as the founder and CEO of the social networking site Facebook, is perhaps one of the most overlooked “celebrity” hunters…until now.

In May of 2011, he set out on a personal, one-year challenge to eat only meat that he kills. To get away from all things Facebook, Zuckerberg is known to set yearly challenges for himself such as wearing neck-ties every day for a year, or much more “academic” challenges such as learning Chinese by setting aside an hour a day to study.

His latest challenge came from one night when he hosted a pig roast at his house. In an email to Fortune, he explains,

A bunch of people told me that even though they loved eating pork, they really didn’t want to think about the fact that the pig used to be alive. That just seemed irresponsible to me. I don’t have an issue with anything people choose to eat, but I do think they should take responsibility and be thankful for what they eat rather than trying to ignore where it came from.

Zuckerberg started small. At first, he boiled a live lobster, then harvested and consumed a chicken and a goat. The New York Times stated that he purchased a hunting license and shot a bison as well. Although after he ended his year-long pledge that extended into August of 2012, he was quoted as saying that he spent most of the year as a vegetarian.

Huffington Post writer Laurel Miller raised the question of how much Zuckerberg was actually involved in dressing and preparing the animals he killed himself.

I respected Zuckerberg for his willingness to get closer to his food supply — until I read that his “killing” has been limited to just that. CNNMoney…and other online news source[s]…reports, ‘the dead creatures go to a butcher in Santa Cruz, who cuts them into parts.’

Excuse me, but slashing an animal’s neck doesn’t make you a hero. Nor does it make you a poster child for ‘knowing thy food source.’ …the real emotional and physical work of slaughtering an animal comes from the skinning, evisceration, and breaking down of a still-warm carcass into recognizable cuts, and removing the organs for later use.

So while Zuckerberg perhaps exuded what some consider a correct moral mentality in hopes of getting more people to admit to the source of their food, he should have talked to Ted Nugent or Hank Williams Jr. to take it all the way.