GETTING past the image problems of harvesting an icon species is one of the challenges a kangaroo export market analysis currently being undertaken will need to address.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
If it can, Nationals Senator Barry O’Sullivan sees plenty of overseas opportunities to be investigated, not just China.
He would like to see a scenario where everyone living on Asia’s eastern seaboard and throughout Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia ate even one gram of kangaroo meat a year.
“If that were to happen, we wouldn’t be able to keep supply up,” he said.
Turning a “sow’s ear into a silk purse” – for many, the concept of eating the native product of the land is abhorrent – and the social licence aspect of kangaroo harvesting will be a big hurdle to jump, but Mr O’Sullivan hopes the study will be the key to finding a way forward for the troubled industry.
Commissioned by the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation and being undertaken by Sydney-based consultancy Oliver and Doam, it will provide a snapshot of export markets, according to Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia executive officer John Kelly.
It is tasked with asking what could be done better and with the job of examining potential markets.
“It will also look at the gross benefits to the country, to agriculture and the environment, but also the auxiliary benefits such as the motor insurance industry,” Mr Kelly said.
Once that was quantified he hoped it would give the federal government more confidence in the return on assets that could be expected and more reason to support industry expansion requests.
“Throwing a couple of million dollars at marketing is only giving us incremental sales growth,” he said.
“We are doing reasonably well in our niche markets, but if we are going to help the pastoral industry, as many want us to do, we need to significantly expand our market growth.”
- (Sally Cripps, QCL)
