A SHOT IN THE DARK
Animal Liberation NSW's latest report on kangaroo harvesting
Prepared by Dror Ben-Ami, PhD

On Friday 16 May, 2009 a media gathering for the launch of Animal Liberation NSW’s latest report on kangaroo harvesting took place at Parliament House. A Shot in the Dark as it is aptly called is a culmination of field work by many varied and long standing efforts of others to expose the truths behind kangaroo harvesting.  

Three major players in the not for consumption campaign for kangaroos spoke at this event. Executive officer Mark Pearson spoke on the realities of the Kangaroo Industry; extensive and alarmingly unhygienic practices, unacceptable suffering and slaughter of joeys and the young at foot and the manufacture of false hope that kangaroo harvesting will alleviate environmental degradation in rural areas. He also spoke about extensive Animal Liberation NSW efforts in China and Russia to circumvent the export of kangaroo meats and body parts to those regions of the world.  

Dror Ben-Ami who compiled the report spoke on the three major parts to this report. The first is Hygiene and Kangaroo Game Meat, the second on Animal Welfare and the third on Sustainability.  

Huge concerns are rightly attributed to hygiene surrounding the production of kangaroo meat. It was this factor alone that was responsible for the Russian Federation to ban the import of kangaroo meat.  This report shows that the regulation of hygienic practices at the three to six million annual points of kill where kangaroos are shot and eviscerated is impossible; that concern of a human health threat from an unidentified epidemic that periodically causes high levels of mortality in localized kangaroo populations and lastly that an independent investigation has identified unacceptable levels of bacterial accumulations in kangaroo carcasses in chillers (holding facilities for kangaroo carcasses) in Queensland.  

Equivocally this report exposes grave issues surrounding the harvesting of kangaroos. Every year some 440,000 dependant young kangaroos are either clubbed to death or left to starve after their mothers have been killed. The results are more severe than those seen in the annual slaughter of baby Harp Seals whose products have been banned in many countries including Mexico, the United States, the Russian Federation and member countries of the EU. A bone of contention for animal activists who have taken undercover footage in the Outback of shooters was that despite the requirement that adults be clean shot with a single shot to the head, many carcasses in remote chillers show evidence of neck shots as the cause of death. There is a DVD available from Animal Liberation NSW on this issue. Another key indicator in this animal welfare section was a significant number of adults receive body shots which enable them to escape only to suffer protracted and painful deaths.

There are vast questions that remain unanswered over the appropriateness of the techniques of decapitation and head clubbing that the Kangaroo Industry has yet to explain satisfactory, if indeed this can be the case.

The third section of the report titled Sustainability located three essential points of interest. First, some localized kangaroo populations are overharvested because they are perceived as pests by pastoralists. In fact, there is no scientific basis for labeling kangaroos as pests. Second, when harvesting quotas are set during drought conditions, in some cases the precautionary principle is not adhered to. This is despite the fact that in drought conditions, when kangaroo populations are typically at their lowest, harvesting conditions remain unabated. Any one of a number of factors in play during drought periods may have such a severe impact upon kangaroo populations during these times that if harvesting continues, these populations may not persist. Finally, although the Kangaroo Industry will tell us differently, kangaroos do not generally compete with livestock for resources (with the arguable exception of drought periods) and there is no indication that they will ever replace livestock as a preferred farming animal.  

The last speaker of the day is well known to animal activists. ‘Uncle Max” sometimes called Max Dulumunmum Harrison, Aboriginal Elder from Yuin Country spoke about his concern about the slaughter of an iconic totem of his people, the Malu, or in other tongues, the kangaroo. His concerns were several: how the manner in which kangaroos are slaughtered for consumption is carried out; that most kangaroo meat is mostly used for producing pet food and that not only is the Kangaroo an important totum in Aboriginal culture, the broader Australian community has adopted it as a national icon as well. Uncle Max didn't mention why the symbol of the kangaroo wasn't taken up by the White Man's Olympics when they were held here in Year 2000 yet many of us who aren't even Aboriginal are suspicious enough of the modus operandi of corporate Australia and are battle weary enough to know how deals are cut behind closed doors that never reach the ears of the general public. Over-all  a most important report sponsored by Voiceless, the animal protection institute.