Picture by Stuart Cohen
Story by James Woodford
AFTER installing solar panels, buying a hybrid car and turning off the air-conditioner, the climate-conscious Australian is now being asked to eat kangaroo.
The marsupials, it turns out, have the potential to be the Prius of the nation’s farmlands. A scientific paper in the international journal Conservation Letters reports that expanding the kangaroo industry would significantly decrease greenhouse gases.
It has long been known that hard-hoofed sheep and cattle have caused land degradation across the continent.
But only recently have scientists become aware of the damage done by large methane emissions of traditional farm stock.
The paper’s lead author, George Wilson, says kangaroos could help cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Dr Wilson is involved with the University of NSW’s Future of Australian Threatened Ecosystems project and also runs the consultancy company Australian Wildlife Services. He and his co-author, Melanie Edwards, say a proposal to reduce sheep and cattle numbers on the rangelands by 30 per cent should be considered.
Sheep and cattle constitute 11 per cent of Australia’s total greenhouse gas emissions. Kangaroos, however, produce relatively little methane because they are not ruminants.
“Reducing cattle and sheep populations and increasing the kangaroo population on the rangelands to 175 million to produce the same amount of meat by 2020 would lower [greenhouse gas emissions] by 16 megatonnes, or 3 per cent of Australia’s total emissions,” the paper says.
The authors argue the increase in kangaroo populations from 34 million to 175 million would be made possible by the decrease in sheep and cattle numbers.
The paper says the carbon dioxide equivalents saved from 2007 to 2020 would be worth $655 million. “If a national [emissions trading scheme] requires livestock owners to purchase carbon permits to remain with cattle and sheep, landholders would have a stronger incentive to use kangaroo as low-emission meat.”
In addition, the authors say, management costs would be lower – less fences or yards, internal or external parasite control, shearing, crutching, branding, dehorning or castrating.
Dr Wilson acknowledges a bigger kangaroo industry is a “hot topic” because it involves big changes in established industries. Many farmers also regard kangaroos as pests.
Also confronting an expansion of the industry is that many environmentalists and animal rights group regard kangaroos as an icon and as a native species that should be protected.
First published Sydney Morning Herald 8/08/08
Unlike most other animals we consume Kangaroos have had the best life. They wander the open range freely, are largely organic depending on what they’ve been eating and then one day the lights go out and they end up on our plate as a sustainable, environmentally harmless, very low fat, tasty food. How good is that? Cattle, sheep and especially pigs are fenced, drenched, herded to an abbattior and slaughtered to end up on our plate as a environmentally damaging, ill treated food oozing with saturated fats that are a major cause of heart disease and a very high medical cost to the community. I’ve got a 15 year old son who’s grown up on kangaroo and he’s 192 cm and 95 kilos with a clear environmental conscience. It’s a no brainer but somewhere along the line the animal liberationists and skippy-lovers have got to get into their heads that their illformed views on what really consistutes ‘being humane” should be more about the environmental balance. What on earth is wrong with eating roo. The Aboriginmal people feasted on them for 60,000 years and would not be here otherwise. We should continue the tradition.
I totally disagree with the above viewpoints.
The kangaroo industry is growing at 7% a year but the kangaroo population is plummeting as the drought bites and climate change intensifies.
The average age of red kangaroos shot in NSW is 2 years (when they would normally live to 22 years) such is the scale of exploitation.
I liken it to the animal equivalent of woodchipping our native forests. Then of course there are the aspects of extreme cruelty as joeys are killed and the young at foot left to die a cold lonely lingering death. Plus the amount of meat on a kangaroo is so small you’d have to kill 4 times the entire current population to even get close to replacing cattle and sheep.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree wholeheartedly that conventional farming has severely damaged this fragile continent but I don’t believe that the largest massacre of land based wildlife in history is a sensible response
Australia used to have a koala and platypus industry until it was realized that native animals don’t respond well to a rapacious industry.
Read this submission to understand why eating kangaroos isn’t such a wonderfully ‘green’ activity.
http://www.wilderness.org.au/articles/review-the-kangaroo-industry
The briefest search of newspaper archives will show this flawed idea being wheeled out time and again. We should know better by now. Particularly when we have learned that Australia is one of the countries to be hardest hit by climate change. How can we then be so blind as to how this hurts our wildlife?
What with the ruthless behaviour of so many roo shooters who see hunting as a good night out, and have no thought for the maiming of their helpless victims, and the damage wrought by drought, you would think the kangaroo population was suffering enough and deserved to be protected at this time.
Instead, the kangaroo-as-commercial product industry wants everything its own way. To be free to serve up our national icon as burgers but at the same time claim the high ground as some kind of conservationists. It is clear that traditional farming has taken a great toll on Australia, and that must be looked at immediately, but the massacre of kangaroos is hardly an answer.
Tim Flannery writes in his book ‘Country’ about Alan Newsome’s study which showed that increased climatic conditions reduce male kangaroo fertility…” Newsome’s study ….filled me with fear for the future of the large kangaroos in the face of global warming”.
Ten years ago Michael Archer said on Radio National that australians could become stinking filthy rich by utilising our wildlife! He formed FATE and spent years pushing kangaroo meat on an unwilling public which will always be reluctant to eat kangaroos killed and gutted at night in dusty/dirty bush conditions. Restaurants serve it to the ‘been there, done that tourist’ but Aussies know -you have to be game to eat it! Do James Woodford and Archer like to play Russian Roulette with their health and with the potential non survival of our national emblem?
“The kangaroo poulation is plummeting”,a typical emotive, alarmist statement from a group unable to accept the need for change. Drive anywhere along the South coast regional roads, the Southern Tablelands and the Monaro. All areas that have suffered from a cyclical weather pattern over the last 10 years. Drive carefully. There has been a signifigant INCREASE in the kangaroo population.
Whatever the pros and cons of controlled harvesting of kangaroos, the world wants beef, lamb, pork,venison,deer and too, kangaroo. Starving millions want food.The policy of shoot, tag and lie of a protected species is pointless, grossly wasteful and an enviromentally unsuitable solution to over population.
Likewise, having traditional rural lands, denuded of pasture, necessitating the destocking of beef cattle is also grossly wasteful of our resources and to rural landowners economically disasterous.
Climate change is happening. Water is and will become more scarce. Roo numbers may be decreasing as a result of the new and evolving weather patterns. Sheep numbers are also at record low levels. Farmers need alternatives if they are not to become extinct. Surely a properly mananged Kangaroo industry would be a much more sensible and adaptable option for managing fragile drying pastures, more than 200% increases in farm imput costs, less water, and continued demands for animal protein?
Many Australians I know are happy to eat Kangaroo. “Dusty/dirty bush conditions” vs a stinking scary abattoir? It’s all slaughter and always has been. Meeting the meat need in the most environmentally and economically sustainable manner is key.
I agree with Mary “Meeting the meat need in the most environmentally and economically sustainable manner is key.” And if as a by-product we are eating a healthier meat, then that has to be a win as well.
I’ve eaten kangaroo and wallaby all my life and I think ama johnson and halina thomson’s comments are way off. How the animals are slaughtered depends on how the industry is managed. Certainly drunken farmboys out for a night spotlighting aren’t gonna provide HACCP standards meat, but so what? We need to be clear: are we debating the ethics of killing any animals at all (I’m not interested in debating religion) or the ecology? On the ecology angle, we certainly need careful studies of what is sustainable, and what will allow the kangaroo population to survive other pressures like climate change. Preventing unwarranted cruelty is fair enough too, but comparing the single shot-in-the-head of a trained roo shooter in the wild to the ghastly mass murder of a modern abbatoir is… well my adjectives give away my opinion there.
Kangaroo meat is much healthier. They don’t damage the soil and emit vast amounts of methane (a really serious greenhouse gas). We should be eating roo, not beef and lamb. The quantity that is sustainable is, I suspect, a lot less meat than what many Australians are used to seeing on their plate. Let’s consider a weekly meat meal instead of 1 or 2 times a day like many of us eat meat.
Apart from the emotive, there seem to be valid points of argument from both camps. I do struggle though with the practicality of how a macropod meat industry would work. I manage an integrated farm system that includes vegetable and meat production and supplies to a local market. Part of our system is Beef production. The beef component provides manure for compost and is harrowed out to improve soil fertility, and meat. I love the idea of farming kangaroo (and wallaby but for the convenience lets use “roo”) but have you ever tried to yard a roo? Or move them on a paddock rotation? AH Ha you say, we don’t need to as they are suited to a free ranging environment and we don’t need to drench or mark so why yard. What happens at harvest time? We are on a small property and there are small kids on both sides, and a highway on the 3rd so my lines of shot are limited. I may get one or 2 clean kills but do you think the roos are going to hang about to see who’s next. There goes dinner and income. As a result, after a couple of meals I have no roos, no manure for the garden, no meat and no supplementary income. What do I now do with my empty paddocks?
An roo industry may be better suited to larger range farms but as the human population increases we may need even the marginal farm land to feed, clothe and provide materials for the burgeoning crowd. Preferably we should take some responsibility for our own meat supply. If you can shoot a roo humanely, eat it. If you hit one with your car, eat it. If you live in the suburbs eat chicken or possum. Or better still…. eat a human.
Sorry I forgot to ask, does anyone know how the methane emissions from ruminants were measured to arrive at the statistics given?
Things are not always what they seem, David. The reason you are seeing more kangaroos than ever is that they are forced to migrate by drought and shrinking habitat to areas where they weren’t seen before.. The facts are that 46 per cent of Australasia’s macropod species are now on the IUCN’s red list of endangered species. Don’t think that it won’t happen to what’s left of our most common species.
Fraser, thank you for the most practical point of view I’ve seen in a long time re roo farming. The logistics of it are just unreal. Not to mention trying to get them into a truck to ship them off to an abbatoir. I’ve driven behind cattle trucks and been horrified at the angle of legs sticking out (to know they’re broken) so would imagine it would be twice as bad with a lively creature such as a roo.
As an overweight nation we need to look at cutting down on our protein needs anyway.
The late Milo Dunphy was concerned about the cruelty and hygiene of kangaroo harvesting. The parasites alone caused him great concern.
Of course the real problem no one wants to face is that if we just eat less things will be easier. Yes, thats less cows, less sheep, less pigs and less kangaroos too. Green house emissions will be less. This also works if there are less of us…perhaps China has got a point? If we don’t learn to eat less, eventually there will be less people. Historically, finite resources have habit of achieving this no matter how much people talk up on one solution or another. If we get serious about conservation we wont ever get to be hungry. But for sure most of our climate problems are caused by too many of us, not what we do, just that there are too many of us doing it. Problem is, trying to wind it back…very few humans are part of a negitive population growth community, and many of those that are, find the future a worry. I guess its much easier to take pot shots at the little things and ignore the really big problem, namely us.
For those of you who have clearly never shot and butchered your own dinner, kangaroo yields a lovely topside and a tail great for stews, but try eating a big old bucks rump one evening. No onder they don’t sell the whole roo in the shops! Lets face it, most of the roo does not make it to the table, by any of the standards we are used to, at the moment. And the energy cost to go and get one is actually quite high once you add all the metal and petrol waste. Perhaps when we are all really hungry things will be a bit different.