CAUGHT in the spotlight, the large kangaroo watches us impassively before returning to its grazing. After checking through his rifle sight, Tom Garrett slides on his ear defenders and advises me to do likewise.
As a vegetarian for the past 10 years, I’m an unlikely candidate for a hunting party. But considering my plans, shouldn’t I take a look for myself at how these animals are slaughtered? You see, I’m thinking of becoming a kangatarian – someone who eats no meat apart from kangaroo.
One reason for the dietary switch is personal. After a long battle with anaemia that is hard to combat with iron tablets, I feel that what my body really needs is the occasional hunk of red meat.
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But there are other factors involved. Kangaroos are arguably the most ethically and environmentally sound source of meat on the planet. The animals whose flesh ends up on supermarket shelves live wild before dying a humane death. They have a different digestive system to ruminants like cattle and sheep, so emit negligible methane, making roo meat the number one choice for combating global warming. What’s more, one kangaroo consumes about a third as much plant material as a sheep, and just 13 per cent of the water. This is a significant benefit in a country that suffers periodic droughts, which climate change may worsen.
Kangaroos are culled to keep their numbers down, but with demand for kangaroo meat limited, most animals end up as pet food or are left to rot. What if, instead of treating them as a pest, Australia started farming kangaroos in earnest?
There would be practical difficulties to overcome, not to mention significant resistance from animal rights groups. But shifting away from cattle and sheep farming towards kangaroos would allow the country to reduce its methane emissions and water consumption in one fell swoop. “For greenies who care about environmental issues, kangaroo meat is perfect,” says Garrett, a professional kangaroo harvester.
Kangaroo numbers have been on the rise ever since Europeans settled in Australia around 200 years ago. Farmers dug waterholes and killed predators such as dingoes and wedge-tailed eagles, giving roos an easy life. There are now thought to be more than 50 million kangaroos in Australia.
TV star
Kangaroos have long been culled to stop them overgrazing the land and outcompeting livestock, especially during droughts. In the 1950s an industry started to make use of the meat and skins, with the excess exported to Europe. It is now a highly regulated industry, to ensure the harvest is sustainable. Only four species can be shot, and the maximum quota is 20 per cent of the kangaroo population in the areas where harvesting is permitted, which equates to about 4 million animals a year. Extra licenses can be granted purely to stop local overgrazing.
Kangaroo meat was not available in Australia for human consumption until 1980 – 20 years later than most countries it was exported to. There were mixed reactions to the idea of eating a charismatic wild animal that features on the Australian coat of arms and in children’s TV shows like Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. Many animal rights groups remain opposed to kangaroo harvesting, saying it is cruel, not only to the adults that are shot, but also to their joeys. Do they have a point?
By law, adult kangaroos must be killed by a shot to the head from a high-powered rifle. A published this year by the animal welfare group RSPCA Australia says this leads to instant insensibility quickly followed by death. Kangaroo harvesters are good shots: according to the report, around 95 per cent of carcasses were indeed shot in the head.
Things get more complicated if the roo is female. A doe usually has a young joey in her pouch, and by law it must be dispatched by a blow to the head. In practice, it is coshed with a metal pipe or swung against the side of a truck. “Blunt trauma is an aesthetically displeasing procedure, but when done correctly is an acceptable method of euthanasia,” says the RSPCA report.
A doe usually also has a joey that is “young at foot” – in other words, still hanging around its mother. By law these joeys should be shot as well, but they can be hard to identify because they may be not be close to their mother when she is killed. Inevitably some joeys will be overlooked.
Animal rights groups, such as Australia’s , say any orphaned young at foot will starve to death. But Adam Munn, a marsupial biologist at the University of Wollongong, New South Wales, says no one knows exactly how old a joey must be to survive without its mother. He adds, though, that even if orphaned joeys could fend for themselves, “it’s possible that the young will die from stress as they are looking for their mother”. The RSPCA report says the fate of the young at foot remains an open question that “cannot go on being ignored”.
“The fate of young-at-foot joeys remains an open question that cannot go on being ignored”
This dispute over animal welfare got me thinking that before quitting vegetarianism, I ought to see how kangaroo meat gets from the grasslands to the kitchen. So I arranged to meet Garrett in Amby, Queensland.
On the night we go hunting, it’s cold and wet. “Just like us, kangaroos don’t like the rain,” Garrett says. Usually he wouldn’t bother hunting roos in this weather, but as I’m here we drive to Amby Hills, an area covering 10,000 hectares and brimming with the beasts. Once there, Garrett flicks on a spotlight on the top of the truck, readies his rifle and scans for pairs of ears poking out of the grass.
Garrett spots a roo about 90 metres away. I hold my breath. “It’s a female,” he sighs, and drives on. This is how Garrett says he avoids “the joey issue” – by killing only males. He has another incentive to do so: harvesters are paid by the kilogram, and males are bigger than females.
While driving, Garrett continues scanning the grasslands with his spotlight. Suddenly he stops. The light has picked out a kangaroo about 60 metres away. Garrett looks through his rifle sight and confirms that he has found a buck. He squeezes the trigger and the roo goes down, shot in the head. By the time we drive up, it is dead. Garrett cuts the aorta, letting it bleed, and removes the head, claws and guts. He then hooks the roo to the back of the truck and drives on. “When you put cows into the abattoir they are moaning and distressed,” says Garrett. “Did you see any distress in that roo before I shot it?” I gulp, but I have to admit he’s right.
“Cows going into the abattoir are moaning and distressed. Did you see any distress in that roo before I shot it?”
The experience convinces me that kangaroos can be harvested humanely. Another big plus is the meat’s green credentials. Numerous academics and lobby groups are calling for the kangaroo meat industry to be ramped up as a way of tackling Australia’s methane emissions.
Environmental scientist and campaigner Tim Flannery, who was chairman of the Copenhagen Climate Council, is a fan of kangaroo harvesting. Invited to make the prestigious Australia Day address in 2002, he said in his speech: “I look forward to the day when we forget about whether it’s a pie or a souvlaki that’s being eaten, and ask instead what the meat is – whether it’s sustainably harvested kangaroo, or beef from a polluting feedlot.”
So what might a kangaroo farm look like? Not like a traditional livestock farm, says John Kelly of the Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia. For one thing, it would not have fences, as they would have to be around 3 metres high to keep in a kangaroo and would be too costly. In any case you wouldn’t want to confine kangaroos because they have a low stress threshold. When chased, captured or even handled, they can get a rush of adrenaline leading to a condition called capture myopathy. This causes muscle damage and gives the meat a bad taste.
The only option, Kelly says, would be a kind of kangaroo ranch, with the animals allowed to roam more or less where they like, as happens with cattle in Australia’s extensive rangelands. Farmers would merely manage the land to encourage roo breeding, by reducing other livestock, encouraging the right grasses and digging waterholes.
Those who are opposed to kangaroo farming say this calls its green credentials into question. “If we want to ramp up the numbers, we need to maintain artificial watering points throughout the landscape, which are environmentally detrimental because you favour water-dependent species,” says David Croft of THINKK, a group that studies kangaroos at the Institute for Sustainable Futures in Sydney.
Kangaroo farmers would also face problems if an area becomes overgrazed. Unlike cattle, kangaroos can’t simply be moved onto another pasture, due to capture myopathy. And because they need such large areas for grazing, irrigation becomes impractical, says Steve McLeod of the New South Wales government’s Vertebrate Pest Research Unit.
On my hunting expedition with Garrett, the rain gets steadily worse, and we head home after 20 minutes without spotting another kangaroo. This highlights another problem with kangaroo harvesting – it can be a haphazard affair.
Still, none of these problems seems insurmountable. Farmers can probably increase the supply of kangaroo meat, assuming the public develops more of an appetite for it. Although kangaroo is available in shops and restaurants, most Australians see it as an occasional treat rather than a staple like chicken or beef – a bit like venison in the UK. A 2008 of 1590 Australians found that only 15 per cent eat kangaroo at least four times a year. The survey found that people were put off eating kangaroo because it is expensive and they were not sure how to cook it (for some ideas, see “Lean cuisine”). The government could, if it chose, tackle both issues easily enough with subsidies and advertising campaigns. Kangaroo meat even ticks the healthy eating box, as like all game it has little saturated fat.
The joey issue need not be a deal-breaker. Already, about 70 per cent of the animals brought to processors are males, suggesting that other harvesters follow Garrett’s strategy. If the public becomes more concerned, the government could mandate that only males be shot. More realistically, some farms might decide to introduce “males only” policies on ethical grounds, in the same way that chicken farms can be free-range or battery.
If a fifth of Australia’s beef consumption were replaced by the same quantity of kangaroo meat, the country’s greenhouse gas emissions could be cut by up to 16 megatonnes a year, or 3 per cent, according to a team at Australian Wildlife Services, a consultancy in Canberra ().
That might not sound like much, but it represents a 28 per cent cut in emissions from agriculture. What’s more, it is an attractive option compared with other schemes, such as carbon capture and storage, which will require expensive new infrastructure. Another plan, to reduce livestock’s methane emissions by changing their gut microbes, might well need another 20 years of research before it can be implemented.
Bouncing to freedom
In contrast, boosting kangaroo farming is “very doable”, says George Wilson, one of the authors of the Australian Wildlife Services study, “just by working with an industry that already exists”. As for cattle and sheep farming, they could be gradually scaled down while kangaroo ranching is scaled up.
Could kangaroos be the answer for other countries looking to cut methane emissions? Unlikely, says McLeod. Kangaroos’ vulnerability to capture myopathy would preclude exporting them en masse, and they reproduce too slowly for a population to be bred from scratch. Even if those obstacles could be overcome, wannabe roo farmers would face their new stock bouncing off to freedom, since they can’t be fenced in. Still, Munn points out that, in New Zealand at least, there are islands with feral populations of kangaroos and wallabies. “As long as the climate and feed are suitable then I don’t see why not,” he says.
The morning after my night of kangaroo hunting, I head outside to shoot some kangaroos of my own – with a camera, that is. From a distance I see them munching the grass and hopping around with their friends. So can I bring myself to eat one?
For a slew of unscientific reasons, I remain reluctant. I’m not completely comfortable with an animal dying for my benefit. But a few weeks later my housemate, having debated the ethics with me, cooks up a kangaroo stroganoff and hands me a plateful.
I hesitate, then tuck in. After a decade of vegetarianism I can hardly remember what meat tastes like, but this seems nice enough. Pretty soon I have scoffed the lot. So for now, my blood cells are happily brimming with iron. But I won’t be eating Skippy again until I really need to.
Lean cuisine
With its low fat content, kangaroo meat can become dry if cooked for too long. “Once you overcook it, it is very tough,” says Sam Liu, chef at Vons Restaurant in Melbourne, Australia, where the signature dish is kangaroo with spicy plum sauce.
With a prime cut, such as fillet or loin, Liu recommends cooking it medium rare: sear it quickly under a hot grill, then put it in the oven for 5 minutes. “It’s the best way to eat kangaroo,” he says.
For a stir-fry, he suggests sautéing a fillet for 3 to 5 minutes, then removing it from the pan. Next you cook the vegetables in the wok while thinly slicing the fillet, to be added to the vegetables immediately before serving.
Up for an Aussie barbie? To make roo burgers, take 500 grams of ground kangaroo meat, 200 grams of breadcrumbs soaked in milk, two eggs, and spices. Combine in a bowl and make patties. Place them on a hot, oiled barbecue and cook for 5 minutes a side.
