Aussies May Unusually Adopt Kangaroo Meat Diet to Fight Climate Change
Australians and the rest of us agree that climate change is real, but the guys Down South can do more than listening to harangues about how to combat global warming - a dish of Kangaroo meat can help reduce their carbon footprint, if an Aussie government adviser on climate change has his way.
Having compared the harmful methane gas produced by sheep, cows and other domesticated animals through belching and flatulence, Professor Ross Garnaut contends kangaroo meat is a safer alternative for the environment.
Kangaroos emit far less methane than sheep and beef cattle and require considerably less water than sheep.
Animal husbandry is negatively affecting the environment and breeders must now be made accountable to check the green gas emissions on their farms. Commercial farms use a lot of water and this may not augur well for the environment either.
To address this and unusual as it may seem, the professor argues, Australians must lead the transition toward production of lower-emitting forms of meat, and Kangaroo meat fits the bill only too well, according to this BBC article.
Kangaroo farming is a more environmentally-friendly meat industry than sheep or cattle farming since kangaroos require less feed than placental stock, are well-adapted to drought, and do not destroy the root systems of native grasses.
But can a switch to kangaroos provide the answer that may cut emissions? Some wildlife activists and animal welfare groups in Australia agree beef and sheep are taking their toll on the environment but remain rather unsure about the carbon footprint bit…
However, kangaroo harvest - if you care to know, done by a single bullet to the brain - has been supported by a wide range of professional ecologists in Australia.
Image credits: Top: Dickuhne and above: DigitalART2 at Flickr under a Creative Commons license.
I am quite concerned whenever I hear environmentalists suggesting we start eating kangaroos to help the environment. On the surface, without looking at the figures, it does seem there are environmental benefits. As soon as we do look at the figures, it’s anything but!
If Aussies substituted just 10% of their meat for kangaroo flesh, there would be no more kangaroos left in just over a year.
Here’s the calculation…
* How many kangaroos are there? 24 million (in 2006) (1).
* How much meat from a ‘large’ kangaroo? 12kg (includes all cuts of meat, but not bone etc)(2).
* How much meat does the average Aussie consume per year? 112 kg(3).
* Population of Australia? 20.1 million.
Even ignoring exports of kangaroo flesh and assuming all kangaroos are ‘large’ (that was the word used in the referenced report), one can work out with a pocket calculator that kangaroos would be gone in a little over a year, if we were to eat just 10% of our meat as kangaroo (assuming we could hunt them to the last individual).
24 000 000 x 12 = 288 000 000 kg of potential kangaroo meat in the current kangaroo population.
20 100 000 x 112 = 2 251 200 000 kg of meat in demand per year, 10% of which is 225 120 000 kg of meat.
288 000 000 / 225 120 000 = 1.28 years, or in 1 year and 3 months, kangaroos would be all gone.
Each year kangaroo populations are studied and a quota is set, i.e. the number that can be killed the following year and still maintain a healthy population. Killing more kangaroos than the quota is thought to put kangaroo populations at risk of collapse. The number killed each year (quota) is usually somewhere around 10-20% of the kangaroo population. In Australia, we usually just about reach the quota each year already. If the demand for kangaroo products increased greatly, the demand could not be met currently.
Garnaut (4) has suggested over then next 12 years we replace about a quarter of our sheep and cattle with kangaroos before we started eating their meat on a larger scale. The yearly cull from which we get our kangaroo meat keeps their population at the current level, and given that females kangaroos only have about one joey a year(5), the kangaroo industry may not be so willing to forego hunting long enough to allow such population increase. Certainly climate change isn’t going to wait that long for us to start to reduce greenhouse gases from the livestock sector.
Even if the kangaroo population reached 175 million as mentioned in Garnaut, it could only supply about 14% of Australia’s current meat consumption per year (assuming a 15% yearly cull), and reduce Australia’s greenhouse emissions by less than 3% (4). In contrast, an animal-free diet could reduce Australia’s greenhouse emissions by at least 27%(6). Eliminating or nearly eliminating animals from our diets would buy us much more time to reduce emissions from other sectors.
It is easy to make an animal-free diet healthy and satisfying. The ingredient variety is enormous and variations are infinite. It can include food that is rich, creamy, decadent and filling, and just about any dish traditionally made with animal products can be made vegan. A wide range of vegetarian meats is available, as well as vegan milks, egg substitutes, icecream, chocolate, and many more. A well-planned vegan or vegetarian diet is suitable for all life stages, including the important pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood and adolescence(7). Moving to a vegan or vegetarian diet requires change, but not deprivation. Only ignorance can consider well-planned animal-free diets as extreme.
Thanks for considering my comments! I also welcome your further comments on what I have said. I want to know and speak the truth so if you see any problem with these figures or this argument, please let me know.
Here’s the refs I used:
(1) Dept Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts (Commonwealth) “2006 Population estimates for kangaroos within the commercial harvest areas”
http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/trade-use/wild-harvest/kangaroo/population/2006.html
(2) Hardman J (1996) “The wild harvest and marketing of kangaroos” Queensland Department of Primary Industries.
(3) Calculated from figures for domestic consumption of meat 2004-5, divided by population of Australia in 2004, from:
*Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) (2006) “Australian Food Statistics 2006” Australian Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) http://www.abareconomics.com/publications_html/crops/crops_07/fstats_tables.pdf
*Australian Bureau of Statistics (2006) “Population” in Year Book Australia 2006, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra
(4) Commonwealth of Australia (2008) “The Garnaut Climate Change Review” http://www.garnautreport.org.au/
(5) Encyclopaedia Britannica Online (2006) “Kangaroo” http://www.enotes.com/britannicaanimals-encyclopedia/kangaroo
(6) Calculated from data from: Commonwealth of Australia (2005) ”Balancing Act”
(7) American Dietetic Association (2003) “Position of the American Dietetic Association and Dietitians of Canada: Vegetarian diets” Journal of the American Dietetic Association, vol 103:6 (748-765)