Essay by Eric Worrall
Greens offering a compromise? Instead of eating insects every day, on some days we can eat Kangaroo.
The beef between cattle and climate change
Host of the outer east’s Changing Climates series, Dr Ailie Gallant, explores how we can adapt our food and agricultural practices in the face of rising temperatures.
Dr Ailie Gallant; Monash University
2 min readMay 19, 2022 – 2:00PMSince the start of the industrial revolution in the 18th century, greenhouse gas emissions created by human activity have skyrocketed.
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Most of these emissions come from cattle and sheep which produce methane when they digest their food.
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Research has found adding more fats, oils and seaweed to animal feed can reduce the amount of methane they expel.
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Alternatively, we can switch to meats that have a lower environmental impact.
Kangaroo is an abundant meat source across Australia and provides a more sustainable alternative to beef or lamb as it creates far less emissions.
It’s also lean and full of important proteins, vitamins and minerals.
In addition, the soft paws of kangaroos cause less damage to Australian soil than cattle, allowing crops and native species to flourish.
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Read more: https://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/outer-east/hyperlocal/the-beef-between-cattle-and-climate-change/news-story/2aa605da41d9ac9215a1f5b677e06ec7
Kangaroo meat used to be really cheap before it became all gourmet, so I’ve eaten plenty of Kangaroo. Works well when mixed with strong flavours like Bolognese sauce or Chilli. You can pan fry it if you get a particularly tender steak, or beat it to death first with a meat hammer, but some people can’t handle the strong gamey flavour when you serve it as a steak. Texan hot spice seasoning would probably work well.
Having said that I’m not about to give up on steak or pork – there’s a reason Aussies farm beef cattle and pigs rather than just hunting Kangaroos for meat.
I’m sure Professor Gallant means well, at least she’s making an effort not to be offensive, which is unusual for a green. But I’m not about to let some professor dictate my food choices because of the predictions of a bunch of defective climate models.
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“Religious Fanatic (n): “A person who does what God would do if only He understood the situation.” “
Via The Bayou Renaissance Man
This thread has been especially interesting to read due to all the eyewitness and expert testimony of Australians. THANK YOU, dear Aussies, for piping up!
My (USA) thought (fwiw, lol) about the lack of an American market for kangaroo products:
The Australian tourist industry (and E. E. Milne and Walt Disney) has done such a fine job of making us Americans fall in love with Kanga and little Roo and all those CUTE and APPEALING and ADORABLE kangaroos and wallabies that it would almost be as hard for me (and many of us) to eat one as to eat a dog.
So!
It appears that it is, either:
1) “Hello, Australia! Here we Americans ARE! We’re here to see kangaroos and lots of other cute and beautiful animals and birds!
EAT THEM?????!!!!! You have got to be KIDDING!”
OR
2) “Hello? Is this Australia I’ve got on the line? Yes, this is the Americans. No, we’re not coming. Too far. Please just send us a pallet of that kangaroo meat and please throw in some skins so we can make shoes. Thanks. Bye.”
And, it really is a moot point…. once you fall in love….. it’s too late……
I eat meat. I also could never eat dog or horse or pig (too intelligent and loving — I know, I know….., just silly, eccentric, me….) or ….
(I know it sounds ridiculous to some of you — yet, it remains a fact for lots of us)
*gulp*
kangaroo.
Roo: … and somebody wants to eat me for supper!
Tourist: hahahahah, right. No one could eeehver eat youuuu.
💖 🙂
Edit: A. A. Milne
Kangaroo is too lean. Let’s engage in good old animal husbandry to slow them down, stopping them jumping and put on a bit of lard, then maybe it’ll work.
Troo dat!
You don’t see any fat, waddling roos.
Wombats, on the other hand . . .
“Wombats, on the other hand . . .”
Um no..
They are 100% muscle !
You do not want to hit one in a car at speed !
I have.
Quite a few times unfortunately.
The two animals on the Australian Coat of Arms are the Roo and the Emu.
(for those playing overseas, Emu is pronounced Eem You. Not E Mooo. Now you know.)
Australia is also, as far as I know, the only nation to also eat their coat of arms on a regular basis.
(also, for those playing at home, there was a thing called the Emu War. WE won that. Emus were gathering in WA in preparation to marching on Perth. A small crack team were sent in and removed the ring leaders with extreme… kindness and respect and absolutely not anything that involved .303 Lewis light machine guns. Honest. Their leaders ‘convinced’ the remaining Emus dispersed. War Won. If you don’t believe me then look at Canberra and Parliament House. What to you see? Emus or Turkeys? EXACTLY!)
I am surprised he didn’t suggest eating “den1ers”, nothing is to much for the cause
The other important thing to remember here is that you to not ‘farm’ roos.
You shoot them.
Professionals go out and shoot them. There is no regulated abator where animals are first humanly stunned in controlled conditions.
So these Green types who want us to eat Roo, are they the same Green types who scream and wail at the idea of animals being shot? Open question.
Also, Roo meat isn’t bad. It is not a straight replacement for beef or lamb from a cooking point of view, so you can farce it up if you don’t cook it properly. I stopped eating it not because of what it is, but because the price went up and now it is a relatively expensive choice at the butchers. My shopping budget is finite, so I tend towards beef for most of my cooking adventures.
Maybe reread the article and nowhere does it make any food dictates.
Its just a list of alternatives if that is what you want to do isn’t it?
I don’t care how nice she may be trying to be, I’m not concerned about cattle or sheep farts and burps and she shouldn’t be either.
I have heard about it but have yet to find it, a cafe in the Australia Outback they call the Roadkill Grill.
The meat is tenderised as it bounces off heavy transport bulbars, not so if the vehicle is a light 4WD as the meat tends to become embedded in the wreckage.
However from personal experiences the best time to encounter jumping meat is late afternoon and night when the carriers come to roads to feed on grasses alongside.
Mornings after the nights before are feeding time for Eagles and Crows, Dingos and other nature’s disposal units.
There is a Roadkill Cafe on Route 66 in Seligman, Arizona. We wimped out on the road kill, but do have the t shirt to prove it.
The hotel at Parachilna South Australia is known as the Road Kill cafe.
I can vouch for their FMG , feral mixed grill. Which can be mixture of roo, emu, camel croc or buffalo.. delicious
It is interesting how Kangaroo become almost domesticated when they live close to people, on the North Coast of New South Wales (one example) is a caravan park resort with camp sites spread out under trees and with lots of grass in a park like environment, the local Kangaroo move around and settle very close to caravans and they do not move when people move about in close proximity.
The rules are to not hand feed or pat them but children sometimes ignore the patting rule and apparently are not attacked by the ever watchful male Kangaroos.
I had Kangaroo Salami when spending a glorious month in South Australia, for the Total Eclipse, back in 2002. And very good it was – better, I think, than the Donkey Salami I had in Spain, hitching back from Morocco back in 1971.
We actually need something that eats Humans there are far to many bloody idiots on the planet.
Wasn’t covid supposed to solve that problem? Poor Chinese quality control – it didn’t do the job. What say you, CCP Griff?
I can see the ad campaign headline on billboards even now.
“Kangaroooooo for you and you and you, meat that puts a spring in your step”
or maybe.
“Skip skip Skippy for lunch and tea, even more bounce for you and me”
I’ll get my coat….
theres one roo that mauled a woman and has attacked a bloke on a golf course in Aus thatd be a good starter for tucker.
its a VERY lean meat which makes it bad for cats n dogs unless rationed or fats added
There were a bunch of big reds around the picnic area in Little Beach in NSW a few years ago, looked like a bunch of teenage thugs. Taller than me. Pretty obvious they’d figured out staring at tourists and looking menacing sometimes got them a free meal. I wouldn’t mind if someone thinned their numbers a bit.
Well I tried eating kangaroo, but was unsuccessful.
It kept jumping off my plate before I could take a bite.
Maybe I should try cooking the kangaroo first.
They want to control every aspect of the life of everybody else. Based on what I have read Roos are a long time source of dog food.
“Most of these emissions come from cattle and sheep which produce methane when they digest their food.”
So aren’t we helping to reduce methane emissions when we eat them?
we don’t get many kangaroos in Eastern Canada sure not at the local IGA or Metro grocery stores!
A university education is becoming a liability to common sense and apparently forbids minding one’s own business.
Already did that.
Was quite tasty in hamburgers. Only the company was found out and stopped using kangaroo meat after the news broke.
The Australian Kangaroo dog treat company, “TruBluKangaroo is an Australian business that specialises 100% in Kangaroo Treats.”
Which is where the claim “meats that have a lower environmental impact.” comes from. Not research, not scientific data, not exhaustive testing and not a control group in sight.
The claim comes from a company trying to sell more kangaroo meat.
While we’re at it, how about promoting consumption of horsemeat (tasty, say the French, who know their onions)? Wild horses in our arid states need constant culling to prevent them reaching starvation levels, and they are bad for the environment in various ways.Win/win.