Eating wildlife, or, why do Museums want our wildlife stuffed?

(This article is a somewhat retouched version of one which appeared in the August 1999 edition of the magazine Australasian Science . In the original article I used some figures from a Bulletin article and also from the Kangaroo Industry Association. In the article below I rely instead on figures from a Queensland Department of Primary Industry (DPI) report. )

Tim Flannery, now at the South Australian Museum, and Michael Archer of the Australian museum, both want us to eat wildlife. Flannery in his frequently wonderful book, The Future Eaters , laments the lack of native animals in his diet and describes as appalling the RSPCA's role in National Parks management programs. Archer has had extensive media coverage of his calls for native animals as both pets and food. Both have understood that our current system of agriculture is highly destructive of our unique natural systems, and both have proposed that we change to methods more "in tune" with our natural environment. In particular, they want us to farm and eat native animals. They want us to eat kangaroos, possums, emus etc. They want us to eat bush tucker.

Well, bush tucker may be tasty, and people who spend a lot of time at museums might get a lift from slowly extinguishing the life of their evening meal with their bare hands, but when it comes to feeding 19 million people --- bush tucker is about as useless as a toothpick in a canoe.

Lets do the sums. We currently kill about 15% of our kangaroo population annually. From about 2.5 million animals we get a mere 600 tonnes of meat for human consumption [2]. That's about 240g per animal. Even if we add in the meat sold as pet food, each kangaroo yields just 6.8 kg per animal. Even if we stop leaving kangaroos shot for the skin trade to rot in paddocks, we still have to realise that they are small animals. The biggest of our kangaroos, the male reds, have an average live weight of only 65 kg, with the females a mere 25kg [7]. Take out the bones, skin and the other inedibles, and there just isn't much left. Grey kangaroos are even smaller at about 2/3 of this weight. A Queensland Department of Primary Industries study [2] into the harvest of kangaroos used in its calculations a figure of about 10kg of saleable meat per kangaroo --- with just 3kg as prime meat and the rest as only suitable for "manufactured meat".

In comparison, cattle supply over 1,700,000 tonnes of beef each year [4]. To get 1,700,000 tonnes of kangaroo meat for human consumption, we would need, at present efficiency rates, to be killing the entire kangaroo population about 566 times each year. The Qld DPI puts the maximum potential supply of kangaroo meat at just 57,000 tonnes per year.

Nor is finger-lick'n possum a real option. We currently put 370 million chickens in sheds each year [4] and raise a 2 kg bird in 7 weeks using 3.2 kg of feed (plus a stack of antibiotics - of course) [5]. Try that trick with brush tailed possums. First, they are solitary animals which fight when housed in groups. Second, they take about 8-12 months to get to a 2kg liveweight, and lastly they eat a big heap of food getting there [3].

If significant numbers of Australians were to regularly eat kangaroos, or possums, or ducks, or any other of our native species you care to mention, then those animals would be wiped out in no time.

Many people forget that we have had widespread `wildlife utilisation' for most of our history and that many of our wildlife protection laws arose because of the damage that was done to our wildlife during that period. For example, the 1885 Game Act in South Australia outlawed the use of the punt gun, a device mounted on a boat which could reputedly kill 150 pelicans with one shot. The sale of wild ducks was banned in 1928 in South Australia to protect the population, and even earlier in Victoria [6].

Our current choices of domestic crops and animals aren't an accident. They have been purpose bred and selected for thousands of years. The modern corncob is much larger than its 1/2 inch ancestor and the animals are bigger, and easier to herd and manage. Jared Diamond's book "Guns, Germs and Steel" [1] gives a solid history of food and the imperatives behind the change to farming and away from wildlife utilisation --- which is really just a fancy word for hunter-gathering. With 19 million people in Australia, there is no going back. Wildlife can never provide serious food for such a population.

What's the most efficient way of feeding people? That's easy. A quick glance at the Australian Year Book tells us that about 65% of Australia is listed as agricultural and 95% of this is used for grazing --- and we export about half of the animal products produced. The other 5% (of the 65%) is cropped and we export about 90% of that (mostly wheat). It is therefore obvious that if you want to maximise the number of people fed while also minimising the land used to do it, then you won't eat animals --- wild or domestic. Put simply, real greenies don't eat meat.

Isn't it interesting that our museums are at the forefront of advocating a policy, which, if followed by substantial numbers of Australians, would leave Australian wildlife well and truly stuffed?

-- Geoff Russell, (Animal Liberation SA, Duck Campaign Coordinator)

References

  1. Diamond, J. (1997), Guns, Germs, and Steel , Jonathan Cape.

  2. Hardman, J. (1996), The wild harvest and marketing of kangaroos , Queensland Department of Primary Industries.

  3. Matilda (1999). Information about the growth rate and feeding habits of Possums is strictly anecdotal and comes from Matilda who is about 8 months old and 1.6Kg.

  4. McLennan, W. (1999), Australian Year Book, Australian Bureau of Statistics.

  5. These are fairly standard broiler industry feed conversion rates.

  6. Stokes, K.-J., ed. (1990), Report of the Task Force Enquiring into Duck Hunting in South Australia , National Parks and Wildlife Service S.A.

  7. Strahan, R., ed. (1983), The Australian Museum Complete Book of Australian Mammals , Angus and Robertson.