Imagine in the US, if families sat down to a roasted bald eagle for dinner.
So it is in Australia, where millions of the country’s national animal emblem are killed
for their meat every year.
Aboriginal people in Australia have been hunting kangaroos for tens of thousands of years,
but in the commercial kangaroo meat industry, are there kangaroo farms or are kangaroos
hunted?
And what is kangaroo meat like?
Let’s find out.
Firstly, Australia isn’t the only country irreverent enough to eat its national animal.
Some other countries include Denmark where they eat swans, Finland where they eat bears,
Saudi Arabia where they eat camel, Sweden where they eat elk, and Japan where they eat
carp.
But there’s something a bit different about eating a macropod.
Surveying of sanctioned kangaroo hunting grounds show that there are about 46 million kangaroos
in these regions of Australia.
That’s about 1.7 kangaroos for every person in the country.
Kangaroo numbers are also constantly increasing.
Logging and destruction of forests is a problem that affects many animals that rely on that
habitat.
But the more forests get cleared for agriculture, the more grassland is created.
This suits a grass-eating animal like a roo.
Because of the high and ever-increasing numbers of kangaroos in Australia, it doesn’t make
sense to add extra effort to farm them, but rather the Australian Government has sanctioned
hunting kangaroos in sustainable numbers.
The exact annual quotas are established by each state and territory separately, but are
typically about 15% of the total population in the hunting areas.
In recent years, about 1.6 million kangaroos have been killed annually, which is about
20% of the annual maximum quota.
These hunting quotas are rarely fully met, but this still makes the kangaroo industry
the largest annual native wildlife hunt in the world.
So how are kangaroos actually hunted?
The simple answer: with guns.
Hunters travel to state-sanctioned areas to kill kangaroos with firearms.
The Australian Government Department of the Environment and Energy dictates the code of
practice for the humane shooting of kangaroos and wallabies for commercial purposes.
This document outlines the rules around shooting kangaroos, in particular that a hunter should
aim right at the brain to cause a quick and painless death.
It also outlines how to shoot at the heart if the first shot didn’t kill the roo, as
well as what to do if a joey (or baby kangaroo) is found in the pouch.
The code of practice states that the joey should always be killed, either by decapitation
(for a furless baby) or by a blow to the head that destroys the brain (for an older joey).
So now that the kangaroo has been killed, how can the consumer get the meat?
It’s remarkably easy to find kangaroo meat in Australia, as all major supermarkets reliably
stock plenty of kangaroo meat products.
These range from kangaroo mince, to burger patties, to sausages (aka kanga bangers),
to full kangaroo fillets.
Kangaroo is a very lean red meat, having a much lower fat content than other red meats
like beef.
This also means that it is easy to overcook.
Kangaroo is best when cooked medium rare, and otherwise becomes tough and chewy.
The taste can be described as somewhere between the two tastes of lamb and beef.
Eating kangaroo meat over other, farmed red meats has definite environmental and health
benefits.
As already mentioned, kangaroo is a lean meat with very little fat content.
Ecologically, kangaroos are part of the natural biome of Australia, so don’t destroy native
vegetation in the same way that hooved animals do.
And finally, farming cattle uses a tremendous amount of energy compared to hunting a naturally
occurring animal that isn’t in danger of extinction.
Some of these reasons have contributed to the rise kangatarians, or ecovores – people
who only eat kangaroo or other environmentally sustainable animals, and eschew the animals
typically farmed in the meat industry.
So are you planning on eating kangaroo for dinner tonight?
You can check out my other videos here if you’re looking for more Australasiana goodness.
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Thanks for watching.