Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is taking on a new challenge.

“The only meat I’m eating is from animals I’ve killed myself,” he said.

The 27-year-old billionaire said since starting the odd challenge, he has killed goats, pigs and chickens.

“I’m eating a lot healthier foods. And I’ve learned a lot about sustainable farming and raising of animals,” he said, according to Fortune magazine’s website.

“It’s easy to take the food we eat for granted when we can eat good things every day.”

On May 4, Zuckerberg posted a note on his Facebook page — where else — saying, “I just killed a pig and a goat.”

The statement instantly drew comments from those who saw the message.

In an email to Fortune, Zuckerberg wrote that he has taken on a new “personal challenge” every year in recent memory.

“I spend almost all of my time building Facebook, so these personal challenges are all things I wouldn’t normally have the chance to do if I didn’t take the time,” he wrote.

“Last year, for example, my personal challenge was to learn Chinese. I blocked out an hour every day to study and it has been an amazing experience so far. I’ve always found learning new languages challenging, so I wanted to jump in and try to learn a hard one.”

Zuckerberg, who talked to world leaders at the G8 summit today about the impact the Internet has on the world’s economy, said the idea to eat only the animals he could kill came to him last year.

“I started thinking about this last year when I had a pig roast at my house. 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,” he said.

“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’s odd diet choice is connected to a Silicon Valley chef named Jesse Cool, who lives near Zuckerberg. Cool introduced Zuckerberg to several nearby farmers and helped him kill his first chicken, pig, and goat. He then takes the animal to a slaughterhouse.

“He cut the throat of the goat with a knife, which is the most kind way to do it,” Cool told Fortune.

Zuckerberg, who is currently traveling in Europe, and his longtime girlfriend Priscilla have been cooking what he slaughters — recently gobbling down a chicken and using the feet to make stock. He later posted a photo of the chicken on his Facebook page.

With AP