During the Second Boer War, Duquesne was under orders to assassinate Frederick Russell Burnham, the American acting as Chief of Scouts for the English Army. After the war, Burnham remained active in counter-espionage for the English, and much of it involved keeping track of Duquesne. In 1910, Burnham and Congressman Robert Broussard founded the New Food Supply Society to import useful African wildlife into the U.S. as a solution to a serious American meat shortage, and Broussard selected Duquesne as an expert. In support of this plan, Broussard introduced H.R. 23261, also known as the American Hippo Bill attempting the appropriation of $250,000 to import hippopotamus into the Louisiana bayous as food source and to control the water hyacinth then clogging Southern river systems. Former President Theodore Roosevelt backed the plan, as did the U.S. Department of Agriculture, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, which praised the taste of hippopotamus as "lake cow bacon". Duquesne's expert testimony on this subject before the House Committee on Agriculture is recorded in the Congressional Record. The bill fell just short of passing, and the New Foods organization was disbanded.
