We kill our gentle kangaroos, and we call ourselves civilised ?

Some people blame the kangaroos, but we all know that land degradation and salinity are some of the biggest environmental problems that Australia faces.

What can we do about it? Plant trees? Promote Landcare? In Australia, we clear many times more trees than we plant. So that’s not the answer, and a study has shown that a decade of Landcare - which has spanned three Federal governments and cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars - has failed to make farmers any greener. The University of New England study found farmers who were members of Landcare had no greater increase in pro-environmental attitudes than those outside the program between 1991 and 2000.

So what about getting rid of the hard hoofed animals that do so much damage to the soil, and farming or harvesting kangaroos instead? Some people think that’s a good idea, but is it? There is plenty of information now to show that the hoary old fairy tale about replacing hard hoofed animals, with soft hoofed animals like kangaroos, is just that, nothing but a fairy tale. In fact, it is a theory that is used by some people to avoid facing up to the seemingly insurmountable problems of land degradation. “If we only farmed kangaroos instead of cattle and sheep, everything will be all right!” But in reality this theory is more full of holes than a kangaroo painted on a road sign.

One academic dreamer has campaigned for years to have his ‘sheep replacement therapy’ implemented by farmers, but not before he made kangaroos the scapegoat for his Total Grazing Pressure concept. According to his latest fanciful theory, sheep would be replaced by kangaroos, and all rural environmental problems would be solved! One of the problems with this fairy tale is that our overseas markets want wool and sheep meat, not kangaroo fur and roo meat, and it fails to explain what we would replace our billion dollar wool clip with.

The reality is that our export markets demand beef and sheep meat, not roo meat, and if we didn’t supply it, Argentina, the US, or someone else would. The economics also don’t add up. It can take 12 years or so for a kangaroo to become full grown and then it produces only 10 kg or so of useable meat, worth at most only a couple of dollars per kilogram. A bullock at only two years of age produces 200kg or so of useable meat worth $8 or more per kg, while a lamb produces 20 or so kg of useable meat at 3 to 6 months.

It’s not hard-hoofed animals ‘per se’ on our fragile soils that cause land degradation; it’s too many hard-hoofed animals on too much marginal land. There are quite a few Australian farmers who manage their farms intelligently, do not overgraze, do not clear fell, who plant trees, allow some regrowth, use cell grazing and water retention techniques, diversify, fence adequately, and who don’t kill the wildlife. These blokes don’t have land degradation problems, and they are doing quite nicely thank you.

Killed Kangaroo Meat as a “kangaroo management option” Early in 1990, a campaign was undertaken without a public process to encourage the human consumption of paddock killed kangaroo meat as a “kangaroo management option”. The campaign even went to the extent of surreptitiously changing legislation to allow the kangaroo meat to be sold in butcher shops and delicatessens. The known risk to human health from kangaroo meat was ignored and industry proponents went to great lengths to try to justify the human consumption of native animal meat. Even the Heart Foundation, who should have known better, came on board and recommended kangaroo meat as a “lean healthy product”. Kangaroo meat was re-classified as ‘game meat’, along with wild pig, so both could escape the rigorous inspection programs currently in place in export meatworks.

In 1988 the Commonwealth celebrated 200 years of settlement by serving kangaroo meat in Parliament House Canberra, ACT, the nations’ capital.

In 1989, Dr Gerry Maynes, from Environment Australia, who was attending a Game Meat Working Party, sanctioned the use of ‘protected wildlife’ (kangaroos) for human consumption. No animal welfare or wildlife protection organizations were represented, only the kangaroo industry, government bureaucrats and vested interests. Kangaroos were classified as ‘game meat’ because they could not meet the strict hygiene standards of domestic animals killed in an abattoir, and the double standards for kangaroo meat was then established.

Then in 1992 the NSW Parliament passed a law by ONE vote from the Reverend Fred Nile making kangaroo meat legal and it remains on the NSW Parliamentary Dining Room menu

There are double standards under which kangaroo meat is obtained as compared to the strict and extensive hygiene, health standards and regulations for domestic meats. Australia has rigid and expensive export standards HACCP (Hazards Analysis at Critical Control Point) and meat hygiene standards (via ANZFA) for the processing of domestic stock. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules relating to international trade in meat products, has considerable inconsistency in the application and the level of these standards as applied to domestic animal-derived meat industries (beef, sheep meats, pork) and those applied to 'game' meat products such as kangaroo.

Canada and at least two other countries do not allow kangaroo meat to be imported because there is no ante mortem inspection, according to Mr Sibraa. " What meat inspectors can't pick up, because they do not look at the animal before it is killed, is whether the kangaroo was suffering from disease."

An AQIS Meat Inspector Slams Macro Meats for breaches of hygiene standards Contrary views to the quality of kangaroo products, and the sustainability of the industry have been expressed. For example, in the 5 November 1998 Minutes of the South Australian Kangaroo Management Program Public Meeting, Eddie Andreissen, a Meat Inspector for the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service ( AQIS) reported “My primary responsibility is ensuring that export requirements are met….I have been in the field over the last few days looking at field operations and field chillers to see if there has been any improvement in two years. We’ve compared them against the Australian Standard and mainly looked at Macro Meat’s chiller boxes but also a few other processors.” Andreissen concluded: · there is not a single chiller box that is clean, with most being unclean or uncleanable. · a big incidence of fly-struck meat is going down to Adelaide, · airflow floors are not being cleaned thoroughly · and there's still congealed blood and muck, · most of the dirty water is washed out from the front with the bones, instead of being plumbed to a drain, · no connection to potable water, only one chiller box had chemicals for cleaning, · and there were still kangaroo feet in the surrounds from two years ago.

It is a myth to say that meat hygiene standards are adequate “There are several basic requirements which always must be carried out in order to ensure that meat is safe. Simplified, these are: independent ante-mortem inspection to ensure animals are not carrying a disease process which may render meat unsafe; strict hygiene during the slaughtering process which guarantees freedom from airborne contamination; an impervious killing floor; adequate supplies of potable water; provision for ablution on the part of the slaughtering person. None of these standards are met in bush killed kangaroos.

Ante-mortem inspection is "carried out" by the shooter himself, the slaughtering process is done on the ground in the dust cloud that surrounds all vehicles in the bush. The slaughtering vehicle carries only 20 litres of water for the washing down of 20 or more kangaroos carcases, and shooters urinate and defecate in the bush. The acceptance of these standards by the authorities could only occur if there is corruption in the system. If people wish to eat kangaroo meat, that is their decision, but they are entitled to know that it is obtained under conditions which would never be accepted for meat from domestic animals. And the excuse that kangaroos do not carry the disease organisms carried by domestic animals is pure humbug. All meat is capable of spreading the principal food poisoning organisms” according to Dr John Auty, Veterinarian and Historian

In spite of this taxpayer funded campaign to put paddock-killed kangaroo meat on our tables, and considerable propaganda to make the killing of kangaroos appear to the public to be a necessary farm management practice, most Australians show little enthusiasm for wildlife meats. Few butcher shops will undertake the health risks of handling the meat, and few Australians will eat it.

Overall the kangaroo meat regulations have been so spectacularly unsuccessful that for at least a year, kangaroo meat from blinded, virus stricken kangaroos was sold for human consumption, including export, in at least three states. A number of cases of toxoplasmosis from kangaroo meat occurred, including a child born blind in Queensland because the mother contracted toxoplasmosis from under-cooked kangaroo meat consumed in a restaurant.

After these incidents the kangaroo Industry went into damage control, pointing out that cats carry toxoplasmosis too. Well, sure they do, but we don’t eat cats!

A gaggle of scientists were funded to produce research papers supporting the kangaroo Industry. These scientists are now often referred to as the ‘kangaroo mafia’ amid claims they have prostituted their learning by hiring out to the highest bidder. There are no government funding opportunities to undertake research opposing the kangaroo kill!

A Code of Practice for shooters, shooter accreditation, and a mythical concept of adequate hygiene in the field were developed, all without public input, and all requirements regulated by the shooter himself!

And then of course, there is the cruelty issue. The Code of Practice recommends cutting the head off any joeys from killed females with a sharp instrument, (in practice a knife or axe) or smashing their head in with an iron pipe. How anyone can support what the Code of Practice recommends, is beyond any comprehension. Of course at the time it was introduced, not many people knew about the Code of Practice recommendations, they kept this sort of thing out of sight until wildlife groups blew the whistle on them.

With regard to animal welfare, AQIS Meat Inspector Andreissen added "At the end of the day, I'm not going to stand and argue about whether head shooting or body shooting is more humane. That is not the issue. The issue is that the perception of our overseas customers and customers within Australia is that body shooting is not an acceptable form of destruction for a wild animal. Head shooting must be the way to go. If by chance you happen to only injure the animal, and you have to body shoot it, then there's probably only one choice but to leave it there. You'll have to record you've shot it but you'll have to leave it there because we do not want to see it in the processing works."

October 18th 1999 with help from Professor Michael Archer, former Australian Museum Director, Federal Agriculture Minister Warren Truss launched a research and development program for the kangaroo industry. The Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC) would assist the continual development of the kangaroo industry, with funds to be contributed jointly by the kangaroo industry and the Federal Government. These amounted to considerable subsidies for marketing kangaroo products such as RIRDC publications by Mark Looney and colleagues in 2002 on ‘Enhancing the Unique Properties of Kangaroo Leather’ and by Joanne Bobbit in 2003 on ‘Buffalo, Camel, Crocodile, Emu, Kangaroo, Ostrich and Rabbit Meat: New value added products’.

The Kangaroo Industries Association of Australia received particular benefit leading to a report in 2003 by its spokesman John Kelly on ‘The Kangaroo Industry - It’s image and market – Improving one by improving the other’. ‘Kangaroos Need Jump in Profile’ and funds were diverted from the Tasmanian Department of Transport to John Kelly’s Lenah Game Meat for possum, wallaby harvesting and processing.

In notes taken by Bev Selway at a South Australian Kangaroo Management Meeting in November 2001, questions were raised about the small sizes of kangaroos being killed. In response the participants noted that “there are not many big 'roos left, just this garbage stuff", another that "To see a big kangaroo is a rarity". Also noted were comments that "If you keep shooting the big stuff, you only have runts” and “ If you keep this up you will only be left with runts". More comments included " We are not taking a cull, we are harvesting the best" and "Some skins we get are the size of handkerchiefs"

These gentle stress prone animals whose only crime is to eat grass, have shooters night after night, in their four wheeled drives, attacking their rich complex family structured mobs as well as causing erosion of the small ground dwelling fauna and vegetation in the outback.

In 2005, the Year of the Kangaroo, realising the growing community outrage over this method of dispatching young kangaroos, a Review is currently being held into the Code of Practice. Industry and government representatives are undertaking the “Review”, and they took more than two years to produce a simple “issues” paper, which wildlife groups have dismissed as ‘worthless’.

Recent Court action by wildlife groups have shown that the management of the kangaroo programs by the various State governments is hopelessly incompetent. Usually one bureaucrat runs the program, with inadequate funding and minimal staff. The managers have to rely on consultation with shooters and farmers as to kangaroo numbers in regional areas. West Australia, South Australia, and Queensland all accidentally overshot some of their quotas in 2003 because of inadequate controls. No monitoring or policing in the field, or at the point of kill, is undertaken.

We believe that the whole quota process is calculated on several errors. One, that kangaroos have increased in numbers since white settlement, another that dingoes and Aboriginals were substantial predators of kangaroos, that kangaroos are major competitors for grazing and cropping; and that commercial killing reduces kangaroo numbers.

Nobody knows for sure how many kangaroos were here before European settlement, but there are many references in early writings from settlers and explorer, to show that large kangaroos were widespread and abundant over the whole of Australia including Tasmania. Models based on the available grazing resources and livestock numbers in 1890 have shown that Australia was capable of sustaining over 400 million large kangaroos pre-European settlement. The Australian Mammalogy Journal 2004 published Red Plague Grey Plague: Myths and Legends, a peer reviewed historical paper by Dr John Auty which confirms this. Environment Australia currently estimates red and grey kangaroo populations at between 20 and 30 million, although drought is believed to have reduced that number.

Another misleading statement is the one about having more waterholes now than in 1860. Yes, there are certainly plenty of farm dams, but most have been dry or half dry for years, and are full of mud, silt, and cow manure. Many farm dams are salty, as are many bore drains. The clean flowing creeks, so abundant in the days of early settlement, and filled by regular rain, have mostly gone. Many of them have been ploughed under and planted with crops, or eroded away because the streamside vegetation is gone. Most of the abundant pre-European freshwater lagoons have been turned into smelly cattle grazing factories. If there is more surface water available for kangaroos now than in 1860, and that’s unlikely, it’s mostly salty, muddy, and polluted with cow manure and farm chemical residues.

Dingoes are usually solitary hunters, incapable of pulling down a large healthy kangaroo. Historical record shows that Aboriginal hunting of kangaroos, when successful, gave status and was not a common practice when other more easily gathered protein was available.

Several accepted scientific studies show that, except on marginal land, or in extreme drought situations, kangaroos are not significant competitors to cropping and grazing.

In the last 10 years we have commercially “harvested” countless millions of kangaroos, yet we now have more beef cattle than ever, 29 million in fact, with beef production jumping 28% in 2004. Lamb and mutton production at the time of writing is almost at an all time high. Killing all those kangaroos didn’t reduce sheep and cattle numbers at all, nor do anything to resolve land degradation. It did however, put considerable stress on kangaroo populations. Recent credible research shows that the average age of red kangaroos commercially killed in NSW is only two, (they can live to 30 years old) and the average weight is only 18kg. It’s not surprising that very few non-government conservation organisations in Australia have a policy of support for the commercial consumptive use of kangaroos.

The same arguments that we now hear to support the kangaroo Industry, are the same ones that were used to support whaling. Jobs and export dollars, and there are plenty of whales left. Well, the lost jobs in whaling were quadrupled many times by whale watching tourism, as were the export dollars, and some species of whales, even 40 years later, may not recover from the slaughter. The same thing could happen with kangaroos, particularly the reds. When the commercial kangaroo kill is finally ended, the few jobs and the truthfully told amount of export dollars lost, will be many times taken up by tourism opportunities to view large mobs of kangaroos in their natural environment.

There is no independent evidence that any wildlife harvesting, anywhere in the world is sustainable. The biggest problem with the “sustainable use” theory is that there is no such thing. Eventually you run out of animals to use, because when money and jobs are involved in exploiting Nature, a driverless juggernaut is created which is almost impossible to stop. There are many examples.

According to the Federal government, tourism consumption in Australia totals between $50 and $60 billion dollars annually. The Australian Tourism Industry employs over ½ million people, more than 6% of Australia’s workforce. The subsidized kangaroo Industry claims to be worth 200 million dollars, in reality probably very much less, and employs a few hundred mostly part-time workers.

Studies have shown that viewing large mobs of kangaroos and associated wildlife would be a world-class tourism experience, greatly enhancing the outback tourism adventure for overseas visitors. And yet we shoot them, kill their babies in a very cruel manner, put them in cartons, and send them overseas to feed prisoners in third world jails.

And we call ourselves civilized ?

Pat O’Brien, President, Wildlife Protection Association of Australia Inc.

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