Kangaroo
harvests are carried out by licensed shooters, who are issued with permits by state and
territory wildlife authorities. With the landholder's consent, the shooters work on those
properties where authorities consider kangaroos are causing damage.
Game meats are amongst
the safest and most nutritionally sound meats available to domestic and commercial
consumers. The highest and most exacting quality control and hygeine standards are
applied to the processing of Game meat. Every carcass is inspected by qualified
veterinarians before it can be sold for human consumption.
All kangaroo
harvesters must be licensed by the Government and pass a Government approved course which
instructs them in aspects such as the laws controlling kangaroo harvesting, meat hygiene
and animal welfare. In addition their harvest equipment must be approved by a Government
inspector to ensure it is of the right standards. The RSPCA has described Kangaroo
harvesting as "one of the most humane methods of animal slaughter possible".
There is only a small
number of licensed shooters and processors. It is therefore in their best interests to
work within the regulations. This pressure to comply is one of the controlling factors in
the industry.
Commercial harvesting of
kangaroos is restricted to leasehold and freehold land which is being used for primary
production. Such harvesting takes place in Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia
and Western Australia. It does not occur in national parks, state forests or conservation
reserves, which currently constitute over 68 million hectares or 8.9 per cent of
Australia.
At present, the five
most common species are harvested on a commercial basis. These are:
the Eastern Grey Kangaroo
the Western Grey Kangaroo
the Red Kangaroo
the Wallaroo and
the Whiptail Wallaby
The first three species
make up over 95 per cent of the harvest.
Early each morning the
hunters bring the night's harvest into small outback towns in Queensland and NSW. In
each town a local representative buys only those beasts that
have been killed humanely. Any kangaroo, wild boar or goat that has not been head
shot is rejected. The carcasses are stored in large portable cool rooms and
transported immediately to an Australian game meat processing plant.
Carcasses are inspected
by state and territory wildlife authorities to check that only those taken legally are
sold (identifying plastic tags must be attached to every animal shot). Kangaroo are a remarkably healthy animal, they carry very few of the diseases
commonly carried by domestic animals. This makes sense since if a wild animal gets sick it
will generally die, if a domestic animal gets sick we treat it thereby maintaining the
disease in the population. For example rejection rates for disease conditions identified
by inspectors when animals are processed are only 0.7%, this is about half to one-third of
what is usually rejected for cattle and sheep.
Most of the skins are
exported to tanneries and leatherworkers in Europe and South-east Asia.
