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back to article Aussies: Eat roos, save the planet

Australian scientists have recommended their beef-loving compatriots switch to kangaroo meat to clamp down on the methane emissions that bovine burger precursors pump out into the atmosphere. The gastro-switch will simultaneously turn what most Aussies consider a particularly large form of vermin into a profitable agricultural …

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  1. Matt

    Wrong Answer

    >Any form of meat isn't going to be environmentally friendly compared to a

    >vegetarian diet.

    So you'd plow under native grasslands to plant a vegetable garden?

    There is a big disconnect -- yes, many modern methods of factory farming meat are not environmentally sound. Confined animal feeding operations dependent on grains have a plethora of ethical, environmental, and health issues.

    But because vegetarians/vegans may have an advantage in that narrow view does not follow that they are superior in all ways to proper meat production.

    The simplest example is a goat.

    Why, in an arid region like the Mediterreanean, should you limit your diet to vegetables when there are large areas of where goats can go up in the hills where you can't grow your own food, and convert plants inedible to humans into valuable human food?

    Even cows are perfectly understandable. It doesn't take many man-hours to maintain pasture. For relatively few man hours, the cows can go out, eat, convert something inedible to man (grass), and produce large amounts of valuable food in milk, meat, and if you're a Massai tribesman even blood.

    Pigs provide a great way to take spoiled foods -- breads don't do much for a compost pile, nor cheese or eggs for that matter, or the odd dead chicken found in the yard -- and produce useful meat for people (as well as good manure for gardens, properly composted of course.) Like cattle, certain cuts of pork are also easy to cure for long term storage of a year or so at room temperatures...providing high density protein and fat year round even if weather has caused crops to fail.

    Vegetarianism / Veganism is not environmentally responsible, truly adopted it requires limiting our food choices and expanding the land we intensively raise human foods on while abandoning to human consumption much land where food animals can co-exist quite nicely with a diverse ecosystem. A mixed diet including responsibly raised meat on pasture and open rangeland would have a smaller footprint on this planet.

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  2. Goat Jam
    Thumb Up

    I eat 'roo all the time

    Having it tonight in fact. A sort of roo mince and kidney bean Shepherds pie, if you will.

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  3. Legless
    Thumb Up

    Roo The Day

    .

    I eat roo at least once a week. It's really tasty, cheap, and makes a nice change from beef or lamb.

    The sausages are manky though. Didn't like them at all....

    Cheers

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  4. Ross
    Thumb Up

    Roo's pretty damn tasty, actually

    Remember, though, the males taste a lot more gamey than the females. And cooking it rare ensures it's tender, overcooking it toughens it up REALLY fast. Still not a patch on ostrich though.

    Mmm, delicious animals. Vegetables are what food eats.

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  5. peter

    Coat of Arms meal

    @Steve: we threw a 'coat of arms' barbie on Australia Day a few years ago: roo & emu steaks with mustard cream sauce - yummy

    it's amazing how many aussies *don't* eat kanagaroo - mostly people don't know how to cook it, leading to the "tough" or "gamey" labels. my guess is that they'd have the same problem cooking venison

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  6. dervheid
    Boffin

    Dear h4rm0ny

    The point of the article was an attempt to REDUCE enteric methane emissions.

    I'd venture to suggest that if we ALL go on a vegetarian "lentils and beans" type diet, then the current levels of global enteric methane emissions will rise considerably. And, as we all know, methane is a far more effective greenhouse gas than CO2, by a double-figure factor (around 20x, I believe).

    So, there we have the answer. It's not the fossil fuel burners, its the lentil-munching, vegetarian THH's that are causing "Global Warming"

    Oh, the irony.

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  7. Paul MacLeod
    Flame

    Roo - delicious

    Of course we eat roo here in Australia, and emu too. I'm proud that it's possible for you to eat our coat of arms....they are both very tasty so why the hell not ? I'd be all for eating koala too, but given all those eucalyptus leaves they eat I'd imagine they taste pretty bad.

    Being at the top of the food chain is something to be celebrated wherever possible...and the best way to do that is eat everything below man in the chain. EVERYTHING ;-)

    Fire, because flame-grilled Skippy tastes delicious.

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  8. Sarah Bee (Written by Reg staff)

    Re: glorious food

    Hmm. Personally I think Westerners only eat dog so they can swan around at home shocking and antagonising people and feeling smug about their lofty lack of hypocrisy. Because obviously there's absolutely no difference between eating dog and eating cow, and if you balk at the idea of the former for any reason at all then you're some kind of weasly inferior being who Can't Handle Reality.

    But I could be wrong.

    But seriously, I can't believe it's 'delicious'. They're carnivores. They don't have natural predators. They're practically made of string. It's got to take some serious um, tenderising to make it edible.

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  9. Chris G

    Now don't jumpy

    A few years back a large number of brits did actually try roo pies and rooburgers, albeit unknowingly. A large purveyor of burgers and a large manufacturer of meat pies were both taken to court and fined over including roo meat intended for pet food in their products.

    Has any one considered farming slugs for producing methane free meat protein? They readily convert almost any vegetation into valuable protein and as far as I am aware are completely fart free. Farming them would also save British farmers huge amounts of money normally spent on eradicating them, and would in addition be able to plant almost any crop to feed the slugs with no attendant costs for keeping the crops free of other pests. And of course it's well known that slugs and lettuce go together well so an ideal combination in a burger.

    Mind you how long before some cretinous hippy comes along with a save the slug campaign?

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  10. Anonymous Coward
    Dead Vulture

    Ban veggies (or eat them?)

    Harmony - "If the US would eat a few more lentils and beans"

    If humans eat more veggies surely WE will fart more and thus destroy the benefit. In fact pure vegetarianism should be illegal - you're ruining the environment.

    Wayne

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  11. Aron
    Stop

    Milk em

    Another econazi plan based on crap science that would result in starving babies and vitamin/mineral deficiencies. As fi the caqll to ban chlorine wasn't bad enough. If we reduce cow numbers where will milk, an important source of calcium and vitamin D for children, the poor and the developing world, come from?

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  12. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    @Aron

    > "If we reduce cow numbers where will milk ... come from?"

    From DAIRY cows, which are bread for the purpose, as opposed to stock bred for beef.

    If you're going to post a serious flame-like comment, you should probably do a little fact checking first. Next thing you know, you'll be attacking italian spaghetti-tree farmers for their poor land use .......

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  13. Mark

    Re: Ban veggies (or eat them?)

    As an anti-vegetarian (in the sense that I really don't *like* eating vegetables) I'll tell you you'r talking shit.

    Yes, we humans eat TOO MUCH MEAT.

    Now, I have problems with vegetarians telling us that we should eat *no* meat, but then you come along with the other extreme end and you're just as full of crap.

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  14. wayne

    Spaghetti

    I remember many years ago, waking up and smelling the most beautiful spaghetti. So, I got out of bed and went to the kitchen, and had a little of it from the spot, boy did it taste good. I then looked over at the chopping board and saw blue mince bits on it, then it dawned on me that my father had grabbed the kangaroo pet mince from the fridge ;) .

    Don't know what he did, I think it is the best (apart from my Asian style) that I have ever smelled and haven't been able to replicate it myself. Hmm, I wonder if it is time to jump back to the pan ;).

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  15. Wayne
    Happy

    Dairy cows

    Hey Mark, have you heard of humour? I thought not. I personally grow and eat my own vegetables but I also like trolling extremists.

    @ the AC about dairy cattle. You also need to do a little research pal. To produce milk, a cow must become pregnant and produce a calf - every year. No calf -> no milk -> farmer kills cow. 50% of those calves (give or take) are going to be male - guess what? Male -> no milk -> farmer kills calf. From an overpopulation point of view, calving every year for milk means a lot of surplus cattle. Do you seriously want to just kill them and not eat them? Or produce only as much milk as can be done while keeping the population constant through old age attrition?

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  16. Mark

    @Wayne

    Heard of NOT trolling?

    Try it.

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  17. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Methane

    Regardless of what we eat, us humans we produce sh!t loads of Methane. It's not the little whisp that passes the cheeks now and then its the 'cake' that dries out at the sewage farm that produces serious amounts. We collect and burn it for electrickery, but only about 1/3 of it, the rest escapes.

    If we build more methane engines and generate more eleccy with it, we can plant more veg, eat it and produce more methane.

    Smells like an idea!

    Mines the white one with dirt up tha back.

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