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Legal case spotlighting diet that involves monkey meat
Liberian says primates part of African religious rituals
BY TOM HAYS The Associated Press

   NEW YORK — From her baptism in Liberia to Christmas years later in her adopted New York City, Mamie Manneh never lost the longing to celebrate religious rituals by eating monkey meat.
   Now, the tribal customs of Manneh and other West African immigrants have become the focus of an unusual criminal case charging her with meat smuggling and touching on issues of religious freedom, infectious diseases and wildlife preservation.
   The case “appears to be the fi rst of its kind relating to that uniquely African product,” defense attorney Jan Rostal wrote in a pending motion to dismiss. “Unfortunately, it represents the sort of clash of cultural and religious values inherent in the melting pot that is America.”
   At the center of the Brooklyn federal court case is a modest woman with nine children and a history of domestic discord.
   Manneh, 39, was previously convicted in state court for trying to run over a woman she suspected of sleeping with her husband, Zanger Jefferson.
   That put her behind bars for two years while she fights the federal charges that could result in up to five years in prison and deportation.
   “The government’s taking a woman away from her children,” complained Jefferson, who’s struggling to raise the children alone. “It’s very depressing, especially with the holidays right around the corner.”
   The federal prosecution also has dampened spirits at the church in Staten Island where Manneh and other African immigrants once packed the pews to practice a religion blending Christianity and tribal customs.
   One of the few worshippers left, Leona Artis, says the congregation’s appetite for monkey meat is deeply misunderstood.
   Take Thanksgiving.
   “Where some people have turkey, we’ll have monkey meat,” Artis said. “Nobody ever ate it, got sick and died from it. I’ve been eating it all my life. It’s delicious.”
   The monkey meat case dates to early 2006, when federal inspectors at JFK Airport examined a shipment of 12 cardboard boxes from Guinea.
   They were addressed to Manneh and, according to a flight manifest, contained African dresses and smoked fish with a value of $780.
   Instead, stashed underneath the smoked fish, the inspectors found what West Africans refer to as bushmeat: “skulls, limbs and torsos of non-human primate species” plus the hoof and leg of a small antelope, according to court papers.
   Three days later, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agents were at Manneh’s door, where she told them she ran a smoked fish importing business.
   According to the agents, she initially denied ordering any bushmeat from Africa or ever eating it while in the United States.
   But after she consented to a search, the agents came across a tiny, hairy arm hidden in her garage.
   “Monkey,” she explained, claiming the arm was sent to her out of the blue “as a gift from God in heaven.”
   Federal prosecutors hit Manneh with smuggling charges that accused her of violating import procedures and suggested she was a menace to man and beast alike.
   A criminal complaint cited evidence that the illegal importation of bushmeat encourages the slaughter of protected wild animals.
   More ominously, the complaint warned of “the potential health risks to humans linking bushmeat to diseases like Lassa fever, Ebola, HIV, SARS and monkeypox.”
   Defense attorney Rostal has countered by accusing the government of picking on a poorly educated immigrant with a “draconian” case.
   Her client’s only offense, she said, was her inability to grasp Western attitudes and highly technical regulations regarding bushmeat.
   Defense papers also argue that the U.S. demand for the meat involved in the Manneh case — from Africa’s green monkey population — is “too small to have any signifi - cance for conservation.”
   Manneh testified last year that before arriving in the United States more than 25 years ago, monkey meat was critical to her religious upbringing.
   At age 7, “I was baptized and they used that for the baptizing ceremony,” she told a judge.
   Baptisms, Easter, Christmas, weddings — all are occasions for eating monkey, Manneh’s supporters said in a sworn statement fi led with the court.
   The statement was vague about how they get the monkey meat but explains that it always arrives dried and smoked. Once blessed by a pastor, “we usually prepare it by cooking it for several hours into a stew,” they said.
   For them, the exotic import is more than just food.
   “We eat bushmeat,” they said, “for our souls.”

EDOUARD H.R. GLUCK/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Zanger Jefferson, center, husband of Mamie Manneh, sits with their nine children around the dining room table, as his wife’s chair remains empty in their Staten Island home. Manneh, a Liberian national, is in prison after being arrested earlier this year in an unusual criminal case charging her with smuggling monkey meat, and touching on issues of religious freedom, infectious diseases and wildlife preservation.

UGH!

She could always move back to Liberia (quite nice since enduring a civil war) and eat ALL the monkey meat she wants. Yes, I already know how ignorant I sound, and how unworldly I am....So what.

I had a friend many years ago - lived in South America- tell me Monkey meat really wasnt all bad  - just make sure you get the all the hair off-

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- just make sure you get the all the hair off-

Now that is a disgusting thought!

My parents lived in Liberia during the '50's.  My father managed the Firestone Rubber Plantation in Harbel.  They had many, many stories about the natives, how sweet they were etc. A gazillion slides of every day life including some of monkeys "grooming" my brother. They never said a word about this ritual and they lived among the natives for five years.

So eat it...have fun.....yuck....I'll stick to the native animals of America....processed beef/pork/poultry......I believe lobster is now a 'high-brow' food after it's history as vendor 'low brow' food on the streets of NYC.......