The kangaroo Industry dictates management of kangaroos!
The Industry hides behind a thin veneer of State and Federal Legislation which does nothing to protect kangaroos.
Note the very small size of the female kangaroos in the above photo. In a year long covert operation, wildlife and animal welfare groups recently inspected many chiller boxes in NSW and Queensland. Accompanied by a Private Detective, and a supportive and disilussioned kangaroo shooter, we videoed and photographed many breaches of the approved Kangaroo Mangament Plan. Our report can be found here! All the boxes we inspected except one had high levels of female animals in comparison to males. As an example, one had 90 roos, 70 were female. Another had 30 roos, 24 of which were female. Another had 90 roos, of which 65 were female. Another had 25 females to 19 males, 9 animals were between 13 and 15 kgs in weight. Another with 22 roos had 16 that were female. Of these females, around 60 to 70% were all within 3 or 4 kgs above the minimum weight range of 13kg.
Above is a body shot kangaroo. The photo below shows a kangaroo that was probably road kill, and has been sold to the processing plant for human consumption.
As shown in some of the photos, many of the kangaroos had short necks. This means that they were shot in the neck, contrary to the Code of Practice requirements, and the heads have been cut off below the bullet hole. As the shooters get paid by weight, they usually leave the necks as long as possible. We didn’t see any evidence of body shot kangaroos in the chiller boxes, but it’s hard to tell when the skins are still on them. We do know, as the photos from the processing plants show, that body shot kangaroos are still accepted in the processing plants, and the shooters are paid for a half of a kangaroo. We have documentary evidence of this.
New South Wales has a lower size limit of 13 kgs, and Queensland 15 kgs, for human consumption. In chiller boxes close to the Border, 13 kg kangaroos are brought from Queensland into NSW to be sold. Amost all kangaroos from NSW area are now used for human consumption, because the price is higher, and the animals are scarcer. Most of these small kangaroos would not even have had a joey!
How "sustainable" is this?
The photo above shows an underwieght kangaroo in a chiller box. This one weighed only 10.5 kilos. Below is a body shot kangaroo in a processing plant. The National Code of Practice insists on mandatory head shooting of all kangaroos. The Industry claims they do not accept body shot kangaroos. Not in this case apparently.
Pigs and kangaroo carcasses were often in the same chillers. Pigs with high levels of mud and blood caked to their hides were hanging up alongside kangaroos. Cross contamination was obvious, and would be worse when loaded onto packed trucks for transport to processing plants over bumpy outback roads.
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