Today, the average American consumes almost 70 pounds of beef per year and almost 100 pounds of chicken. But those numbers could have been quite different. A century ago, American policymakers pushed for a different kind of meat supply in the United States — hippo meat. In 1910, a Louisiana politician introduced a bill to bring hippopotamuses to the country in the hopes that they would both eat invasive plants and alleviate a meat shortage.

https://allthatsinteresting.com/cocaine-hippos

credits: ⁠https://allthatsinteresting.com/podcast-credits⁠

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