The provincial authorities in Gelderland and Noord-Holland are developing schemes to put more culled geese on dinner tables instead of in the incinerator.

In Gelderland, a “goose taxi”will distribute the birds to poulterers and restaurants and in Noord-Holland, farmers have installed large cold rooms for storage. “Many hunters don’t want to shoot animals just to see the meat go to waste,” hunter Erik van den Horst told local broadcaster Omroep Gelderland.

Some breeds of geese are considered a pest in the Netherlands because they eat grass, spread disease and pose a danger to air safety near airports.

Of the two million geese in the Netherlands, 55,000 are either shot or gassed in Noord-Holland every year while in Gelderland, 43,000 geese are culled. Very few are eaten.

The provinces,  hunters and farming organisation LTO have now come up with a scheme whereby hunters leave a message on WhatsApp to say they have shot a number of geese.

The goose taxi picks them up and takes them to be processed at a plant in Kootwijkerbroek. The meat is then delivered to poulterers and restaurants.

Van der Horst has great expectations for the scheme. “Goose meat is not very well known but it’s very tasty,” he said. “It would be enough if every person in Gelderland ate just one or two goose burgers a year,” he said.

Hunter Tok Poortvliet, who has been hunting geese in Noord-Holland for 25 years, is also happy the meat won’t go to waste.

“I have so many there’s no getting rid of them. Some go to zoos, some to a mate who roasts them. I put a couple in the freezer but that’s it,” he said.

There are now four refrigerated rooms at farms in Noord Holland where the geese will be collected before they are distributed, and more are planned.