Seared Kangaroo Rump to Stop Greenhouse Effect

A few weeks ago I suggested the Purple Pickle Cafe at the Australian National Unviersity in Canberra add kangaroo to the menu. Professor Garnaut then released his Climate Change Report. This included a recommendation that Australians eat more kangaroo. Today the Purple Pickle served Seared Kangaroo Rump with potato rostie, roquette and roast garlic. This showed that Kangaroo meat is in no way inferior. Perhaps the Pickle should create a Kangaroo Garnaut-burger, in honour of the Professor's work to save the planet. ;-)

Australian marsupials emit negligible amounts of methane from enteric fermentation (Klieve & Ouwerkerk 2007). This could be a source of international comparative advantage for Australia in livestock production. For most of Australia’s human history—around 60 000 years—kangaroo was the main source of meat.3 It could again become important. However, there are some significant barriers to this change, including livestock and farm management issues, consumer resistance and the gradual nature of change in food tastes.

Edwards and Wilson (2008) have modelled the potential for kangaroos to replace sheep and cattle for meat production in Australia’s rangelands, where kangaroos are already harvested. They conclude that by 2020 beef cattle and sheep numbers in the rangelands could be reduced by 7 million and 36 million respectively, and that this would create the opportunity for an increase in kangaroo numbers from 34 million today to 240 million by 2020. They estimate that meat production from 175 million kangaroos would be sufficient to replace the forgone lamb and beef meat production, and that meat production from kangaroos would become more profitable than cattle and sheep when emissions permit prices exceed $40 per tonne CO2-e. The net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions would be about 16 Mt CO2-e per year. ...

From: Transforming rural land use, Chapter 22, Garnaut Climate Change Review Final Report, 2008

See also:

• Cooking with Kangaroo, from the Kangaroo Industry Association
• Kangaroo Cookin': 88 Simple Roo Recipes, by Peter Winch, Andrew Thompson and Kent McCormack
• Books on Cooking Kangaroo