Interesting. I didn't know the muktuk was aged. Muktuk usually refers to the whale skin and subcutaneous fat. It makes sense, because I had read that they like it when the seal oil ferments.
When looking into this, I found the following. Apparently, the types of containers one keeps high foods in is very important:
<<Risks of consuming fermented foods
Alaska, despite its small population, has witnessed a steady increase of cases of botulism since 1985. It has more cases of botulism than anywhere else in the United States of America.[12] This is caused by the traditional Eskimo practice of allowing animal products such as whole fish, fish heads, walrus, sea lion and whale flippers, beaver tails, seal oil, birds, etc., to ferment for an extended period of time before being consumed. The risk is exacerbated when a plastic container is used for this purpose instead of the old-fashioned method, a grass-lined hole, as the botulinum bacteria thrive in the anaerobic conditions created by the plastic.[12]>>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermentation_(food)
Well, eating rotting, aged cooked wild gamebirds was a common practice among the English upper classes and they seem to have thrived on it.
But were the meats rotted and then cooked, so that the bacteria might have been killed off, or the reverse?
And then there's the Inuit on their partially-cooked diets who seemed to be OK on raw high-meat. For my part, I've found that my usual detox effects from cooked foods are minimal if I consume high meat beforehand, suggesting little conflict.I don't think the cooked-food eaters who get very ill from undercooked foods do so because of a conflict between cooked and raw foods. Rather, I think there is some difference in their bodies, because not all cooked-food eaters who eat the same tainted food get sick. I suspect that some people's systems are more damaged than others by modern diets, and these people are less able to handle bacteria, especially pathogenic bacteria, than others.
The real key issue is to get hold of high-meat from a high-quality raw source - if the raw animal food comes from a polluted bay or from a grainfed cow etc., then one should avoid aging it like the plague.
Thanks, that's good to know.