Saving the planet by eating kangaroos and wild camels may seem like pie in the sky, but the offbeat menu comes with a scientific stamp of approval in Australia.
The aim in both cases is to reduce damage to the environment, but the reasoning behind the push to put the animals on the menu is sharply different.
In the case of kangaroos, environmentalists say the national animal should become a dietary staple in place of cattle and sheep as part of the fight against global warming.
PHOTO: AFP
The farm animals make a major contribution to Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions simply by belching and farting, while kangaroos emit negligible amounts of dangerous methane gas.
In other words, there should be more kangaroos and fewer farm animals.
“For most of Australia’s human history — around 60,000 years — kangaroo was the main source of meat,” the government’s top climate change adviser professor Ross Garnaut, said in a major report on global warming recently.
“It could again become important.”
In the case of camels, scientists say eating the imported animals would be one way of reducing the million-strong feral herd — one of the largest on earth — running amok in the fragile ecosystems of the outback.
“Eat a camel today, I’ve done it,” says professor Murray McGregor, co-author of a three-year study on the humpbacked pests presented to the government last month.
In each case, the scientists admit they face a struggle to change Australia’s eating habits, but believe strongly in the need to somehow cut the numbers of sheep, cattle and camels.
Garnaut’s study concluded that by 2020, beef cattle and sheep numbers could be reduced by 7 million and 36 million respectively, allowing for an increase in kangaroo numbers to 240 million by 2020, from 34 million now.
He acknowledged, however, that there were some problems in this plan, including livestock and farm management issues, consumer resistance and the gradual nature of change in food tastes.
The idea of farming kangaroos — which appear on the Australian coat of arms — for human consumption is distasteful to some, but many health-conscious Australians already eat kangaroo meat.
“It’s low in fat, it’s got high protein levels, it’s very clean in the sense that basically it’s the ultimate free range animal,” says Peter Ampt of the University of New South Wales’s institute of environmental studies.
A similar argument was put forward last month in an attempt to whet Australian appetites for camel meat.
A three-year study found that Australia’s population of more than a million feral camels is out of control and damaging fragile desert ecosystems, water sources, rare plants and animals.
The Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Center, which produced the report presented to the federal government, said a good way to bring down the number of camels is to eat them.
“It’s beautiful meat. It’s a bit like beef. It’s as lean as lean, it’s an excellent health food,” McGregor said.
Unlike the native kangaroo, camels were introduced into Australia as pack animals for the vast outback in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but were released into the wild as rail and road travel became more widespread.
With few natural predators and vast sparsely populated areas in which to roam, the population has soared to around a million and is now doubling about every nine years, the center’s Glenn Edwards said.
While putting camels on the menu could help reduce their numbers, and is one of the proposals in the report, Edwards admits it is unlikely that Australia can eat its way out of the problem.
Hundreds of thousands of camels will have to be removed to bring the numbers down to a point where they cause minimal damage, he said.
“I think [eating them] is an option that may work in some areas but it won’t be the panacea,” he said.
The local market for camel meat would be limited and even given the fact that there is a large demand from some countries overseas it would be difficult to harvest and process the animals.
Switching from cattle and sheep to kangaroos also faces problems, said beef farmer Kelvin Brown.
Transporting kangaroos to the abattoir would also be fraught with difficulties.
Turning heads as they cruise past office buildings and malls, driverless taxis are slowly spreading through Chinese cities, prompting both wariness and wonder. China’s tech companies and vehicle manufacturers have poured billions of dollars into self-driving technology over the past few years in an effort to catch industry leaders in the US. Now the central city of Wuhan boasts one of the world’s largest networks of self-driving cars, home to a fleet of more than 500 taxis that can be hailed on an app just like regular rides. At one intersection in an industrial area of Wuhan, AFP reporters saw at least five
China and Vietnam yesterday inked 14 documents spanning cross-border railways to crocodile exports after Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) met with new Vietnamese leader To Lam in Beijing. The Vietnamese president’s visit to Beijing, his first overseas trip since becoming the general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam earlier this month, signals a desire between the two communist neighbors to strengthen ties, amid growing trade and investment, despite occasional clashes over boundaries in the South China Sea. “China has always regarded Vietnam as a priority in its neighborhood diplomacy, and supports Vietnam in adhering to the party leadership, taking the socialist
A former Saudi Arabian official alleged in a report that the kingdom’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman forged the signature of his father on the royal decree that launched the kingdom’s years-long, stalemated war against Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Saudi Arabia did not immediately respond to a request for comment over the allegations made without supporting evidence by Saad al-Jabri in an interview published yesterday by the BBC, but the kingdom has described him as “a discredited former government official.” Al-Jabri, a former Saudi Arabian intelligence official who lives in exile in Canada, has been a years-long dispute with the kingdom as
‘ENOUGH IS ENOUGH’: Hospitals said faculty staff from medical colleges were assisting with emergency cases as more than 1 million doctors were expected to strike Hospitals and clinics across India yesterday turned away patients except for emergency cases as medical professionals began a 24-hour shutdown in protest against the brutal rape and murder of a doctor in the eastern city of Kolkata. More than 1 million doctors were expected to join the strike, paralyzing medical services across the world’s most populous nation. Hospitals said faculty staff from medical colleges had been pressed into service for emergency cases. The strike, which began at 6am, cut off access to elective medical procedures and out-patient consultations, the Indian Medical Association said in a statement. The discovery of the 31-year-old doctor’s bloodied