Peta

[Renee_Turner]

When I was in primary school, we always went to the wildlife park on excursions. I came back one day with a bite out of my clipboard - I believe it when they say that bite power to weight rato, the devil is second only to the great white.

[sooty]

i love tassie devils...massive soft spot i'm afraid. admittedly, never seen them outside a zoo/national park, nor heard them chomping through some delicious possum, but they're just so adorable. Still. And yup, you're right strongest jaws in any mammal, ooh yeah, cop that ya stupid lion.
And i like Tofu, i think its delicious, especially in curry, or those bizarre little deserts i get at the Koren BBQ place (which admittedly has a lot of meat as well). and i like meat. Hey, its almost like i'm an omnivore!
oh, and the guy that makes clothes outta cats may well be a dude from SA who runs Warrawong Sanctuary called John..(thankyou Google, and bizarrely Don Burke) Wamsley
"The sanctuary sells cat skin rugs and cat skin hats. They are in need of cat skin suppliers and will pay $20 each for properly tanned cat skins."
" The first platypus bred in captivity since 1943 was bred at Warrawong in 1991 from three juveniles collected on Kangaroo Island." (Just cos I'm a bit proud of the work Mr Wamsley did...he may be retired now)

a little OT, but does anyone remember the dude who's lion was gonna rip you becucking head off? It may have been on the J forum...sorry...

[Gutter Monkey]

Originally Posted by Mythor

The kangaroo isn't Australia's national (animal) emblem - we don't actually officially have one.

Nope, but it's on our national crest, which is the closest we get to having emblematic animals.

I'm sure the British would have HEAPS of recipes for lions and unicorns if there were any left over there.
They probably ate 'em all.

[Gutter Monkey]

I saw a great grab of the American 'Scare Tactics' show where they convinced a Peta member to accompany a guy to an 'animal testing lab' to document what was going on there and they had a midget dressed up as a rat mutant running around. The Peta dude freaked out.

[Renee_Turner]

Link?

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[Keyser Soze]

I'm a big believer in the idea that countries should utilize (as far as practicable, obviously some countries have very few resources and that makes this hard) the resources that are most readily available to them. So I am pro-kangaroo meat. The less we have to import from overseas the better. This is also why I can't understand why there are rice farmers in Australia. Rice crops requires huge amounts of water in order to grow, and people are still trying to farm it in one of the driest inhabited places on earth. Its stupid. Sorry i've gotten a little off topic...

I also love Tassie Devils. I've only seen them in zoos and wildlife parks too. But I have a soft spot for them too. The whole tumor thing is very sad. Have they got the epidemic under contorl yet?

NB - my opinion of kangaroos as food is in no way a justification for what that idiot in the picture did. What a tool. Killing animals for food is a far cry from fiddling with their corpses.

[Renee_Turner]

The facial tumour disease? No, it's still around. That's why there's been so much debate about sending a breeding pair to Denmark as a baby gift.

They're really not that cute when they're chewing on your nan's chickens. (That's not a euphemism)

[Mythor]

Originally Posted by Keyser Soze

This is also why I can't understand why there are rice farmers in Australia. Rice crops requires huge amounts of water in order to grow, and people are still trying to farm it in one of the driest inhabited places on earth. Its stupid.

Money makes people do some strange things. Australian saki is, or used to be, considered better than the Japanese ones.
If you grow it up in the tropics I'd guess it probably does better there than out near Uluru or something.

While we do have a lot of kangaroos in the country, I'm not sure how practical they'd be for farming for meat on the kind of scale that would be needed to actually feed the population. Cows are likely to still be a better option?

[Gutter Monkey]

Originally Posted by Renee_Turner

Link?

Nope, email attachment.

Although it's probably out there ... I'll have a quick look.

[Mythor]

This looks like it might be the clip

, but I don't care if it's not because it's fucking hilarious anyway.

[Gutter Monkey]

That's the one!!!

[Keyser Soze]

Yes the facial tumour.. thats sounds so awful. But i don't blame you for not liking them that much when you've seen them do such nasty things. There was also talk in the scientific community of re-introducing them to the mainland (i think).

Originally Posted by Mythor

While we do have a lot of kangaroos in the country, I'm not sure how practical they'd be for farming for meat on the kind of scale that would be needed to actually feed the population. Cows are likely to still be a better option?

That could be true. Although I don't see that many practicality issues with farming kangaroos. Do you mean in terms of handling the animals? But thats not to say i'm against farming all non-native species. They're already here and done damage, there'd be no use trying to get rid of them now that they're part of the ecosystem anyway.

[Mythor]

It'd take too many generations of selective breeding to get them to a point where they'd be "naturally" inclined to bulk up, thus providing more meat per animal versus bones/skin/hair/organs/etc. I'm also not sure how well suited they'd be to that kind of thing, since they rely on balance and bounding around, rather than the sedate plodding of cows.
It's fine to farm them on a smaller scale, because people will pay the premium for having to farm an undomesticated animal. (or for people to go out and hunt them)

I can only imagine how much PETA would complain if Australia tried it anyway.

[Gutter Monkey]

Originally Posted by Mythor

It's fine to farm them on a smaller scale, because people will pay the premium for having to farm an undomesticated animal. (or for people to go out and hunt them)

Kangaroo meat currently costs about half of what you'd pay for beef. At least, it does in my local supermarket.

Kangaroo is meat is really good for you. It has one of the lowest fat contents of any animal. I eat it fairly often.

[Renee_Turner]

My mum makes the best kangaroo patties.[/random]

Don't they do a massive cull every year anyway? Why not eat them?