"export" news and stories

There are around 50 million kangaroos of various types in Australia. Australians have always had kangaroo meat available, but it usually only graced the table of the poor or the bowls of their canine companions. Lately kangaroo is becoming a lot more popular. Tourists started the trend, but now you are starting to see the meat on the menu of both higher end restaurants, and smaller, rough and rustic joints. Usually in the form of steaks, sausages, salami, and meat pies.

The meat tastes a bit like beef and venison, but with a more tender texture, and is very lean. It is very healthy, and is considered a "diet food" since it is so low fat, and poly-unsaturated at that. I tried it once many years ago, but it was marinated and grilled over smoky coals and even shoe leather would taste good prepared that way. I look forward to trying it again sometime soon, especially now that I know how to properly cook kangaroo meat (and wallaby.)

Kangaroo isn't farm raised, they are collected during government culling to prevent their over population and to prevent excessive crop damage. The kangaroos are killed by professionals who sell them to butchers. Selling kangaroo meat for the dinner table has been legal in South Australia since 1980 and in the rest of Australia since 1993. Exports have grown from hardly anything in 1989 to $20 million in 2001, and it is cheaper than beef, selling for about $Au 1.50 a pound for ground meat and $Au 4 a pound for fillets.

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The "food miles" theory says that the further food has to travel to reach its destination - such as food imported to Europe from New Zealand - the worse it is for the environment because of the greater quantity of pollutants emitted during transport. Researchers in New Zealand, where farmers and ranchers had a good deal of revenue at stake due to their remote location, put the theory to the test and came up with some interesting results.

Their overall conclusion was that the number of miles a food had traveled was not a reliable indicator of its environmental impact. Many forms of produce, as well as dairy and sheep meat, were found to be more energy efficient even when travel to Europe was taken into account. A similar study in the UK produced the same results.

This does not mean that buying goods from far away is necessarily "better" than buying local goods. It simply means that the method of production is what counts, not overall distance traveled, if environmental factors are a primary consideration when purchasing food. Locally produced food may be better in some cases, but it might not be if it is not responsibly produced in the first place. Buying local is a great way of supporting the local economy and keeping revenue within the community and for consumers who make that a priority, local still might be a better choice.

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