The people I refer to could be described as radical, unprincipled, vegetarian, wildlife activists. But let us dispense with that mouthful, and call them instead Vegetarians International Voice for Animals.

Vegetarians International is a UK-based outfit that could teach a Mafia Don a thing or two about lying with a straight face. "Why you kill zees animal?" you can almost hear them say. "It is zee last one, and besides, eet poison you and eet very smart lika Einstein." All of which makes being on the wrong end of a Vegetarians International campaign a galling experience, as Australia's kangaroo industry has been finding out.

The trouble began last year, when Vegetarians International decided British supermarkets were no place to sell kangaroo meat, and launched a campaign to get it off the shelves.

The campaign is based around a report by Juliet Gellatley, director of Vegetarians International, entitled "The Killing of Kangaroos for Meat". The title is so bland and to the point, one might think this was the work of a government veterinarian. But its contents are another matter - they are emotive, unsupported by scientific evidence, and treat the truth like it had gone out of style.

Central to Gellatley's report is video footage obtained by a film crew commissioned by IFAW, another radical animal rights organisation. While claiming to show standard industry harvesting practice, what the video actually shows are acts of extreme cruelty being committed against kangaroos. In subsequent prosecutions against the shooter in the film, it has come to light that he was not licensed to shoot kangaroos, had never supplied kangaroos to the commercial industry, and had been enticed to perform his cruel acts by the film crew, which had claimed to represent an American game hunters' magazine! The trial and conviction of the "shooter" occurred in 1996, so Gellatley can hardly plead ignorance.

And the rest of Gellatley's report is equally deceitful, as it seeks to paint the kangaroo harvest as unsustainable, cruel and unhealthy.

Fanciful Figures

"The official current kangaroo kill rate is 5.2 million annually," it states authoritatively, not forgetting "an estimated 4 million joeys [which] also die when their mothers are killed."

Where these numbers come from is a mystery, given that the largest harvest ever is the current 3.2 million. As for those 4 million joeys, this is a biological impossibility, even if every kangaroo harvested were female. In practice, data show that females account for about 40% of the harvest, and at any one time only half are carrying joeys, giving a total of 600,000 killed as a result of the harvest. Gellatley also fails to mention that despite the scale of the harvest, kangaroo populations are at record levels and increasing.

On the cruelty front, Gellatley tries to get mileage out of a report on the harvest by the RSPCA, which she claims found that "15% of all commercially killed animals die inhumanely."

In actuality, the RSPCA report to which she refers (produced way back in 1984) concluded that "kangaroo harvesting is one of the most humane forms of animal slaughter." As for the figure of 15%, this was given for those roos that weren't head shot. The bulk of these were killed with chest shots, and again the RSPCA endorsed these kills as humane. There is always room for improvement in the standards of any harvest, which is why the industry has since put in place regulations requiring all animals to be head shot. Now the industry has invited the RSPCA to conduct another audit of the harvest's welfare outcomes, confident that industry standards are extremely high.

Gellatley further claims that the killing of joeys "is obscene and cruel", but selectively chooses to ignore the RSPCA this time. Why? Because its conclusion was diametrically opposed to her own. "The dispatch of pouch young by professional shooters was generally by a sharp blow to the head or by decapitation," observed the RSPCA. "There is no reason to consider this cruel."

And if these just sound like a few harmless white lies or exaggerations, try getting your mind around these beauties:

Gellatley: "It is believed the red kangaroo may become extinct within two years."

Fact: No scientist with any knowledge of kangaroo management would lose a wink of sleep over the health of the red roo population, and why should they? Numbering in the region of 10 million and increasing, they are as likely to go extinct in two years as learn to fly.

Gellatley: "It was illegal to sell kangaroo meat in Australia until 5 years ago and Australian supermarkets refuse to stock it. The German Government will not allow its sale."

Fact: The sale of kangaroo meat for human consumption has been legal in South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania for at least 15 years. Many supermarkets in Australia do stock it, and many hundreds of tonnes are legally sold in Germany each year.

Gellatley: "It was kangaroo meat which was responsible for Australia's first recorded outbreak of toxoplasmosis."

Fact: It sounds scary, but it's not.

First of all, a scientific investigation of the 1994 incident referred to by Gellatley could not conclusively link the outbreak to kangaroos or any other source. At any one time some 70% of Australians will test seropositive for recent toxoplasmosis infection, and this can be contracted in one of two ways. The least common is by eating meat from infected animals, but you are far more likely to get it from lamb (of which 30% are infected) or sheep (60%), than from kangaroo (2%). And even then you must eat it rare; the toxo is killed by cooking the meat at just 62°C for 4 minutes.

By far the most common way for humans to contract toxo is to ingest matter carrying traces of cat shit - and that means garden vegetables that have not been washed properly.

But even if you are infected with toxo, is it dangerous? Clearly not, or 70% of Australians would be rather ill! (Seriously though, elderly people, the sick or otherwise immunochallenged, and pregnant women should avoid diets high in raw mutton and unwashed vegetables, which are much greater threats than kangaroo meat.)

Welcome to Australia

So who is this Juliet Gellatley who claims to know so much about the welfare and management of kangaroos? By her own confession, she set foot in Australia for the first time last March, and until then had never seen a kangaroo outside of a zoo, let alone the 30 million of the western rangelands she claims are threatened with extinction.

One thing is for sure: her views of the kangaroo industry are not shared by the vast majority of Australia's professional ecologists. The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, one of Australia's most respected scientific bodies, describes the kangaroo industry as "clearly sustainable". And both the Australian Wildlife Management Society and the Australian Veterinary Association are encouraging development of the kangaroo industry as an environmentally friendly alternative to the destruction caused by our exotic (i.e., sheep and cattle) livestock industries.

Gellatley prefers her organisation, Vegetarians International Voice for Animals, to be known by its less unwieldy acronym, VIVA. But in this part of the world, VIVA already stands for something else: an organisation that is intentionally obstructing efforts by the kangaroo industry to deliver huge environmental benefits to our rangelands. It stands for Vegetarians Intentionally Vandalising Australia!

The Australian Senate is currently finalising an inquiry into wildlife utilisation which is expected to declare the kangaroo industry a model of sustainability. The industry has, after all, been harvesting in excess of 2 million animals for the last 25 years, while kangaroo numbers are at record levels and increasing.

Over the last five years the Australian scientific community has come to the conclusion that after 25 years of intensive research, monitoring and development, the kangaroo harvest has passed the "precautionary principle".

And kangaroo harvesting is not just sustainable; there is also a growing body of opinion that considers it environmentally wise. In 1997 one of Australia's leading ecologists, Prof. Michael Archer of the University of New South Wales, told the agricultural community at the National Landcare Conference that they should seriously consider switching from sheep and cattle, which degrade their lands, to kangaroo production.

In part as a response to this ground swell of support, the Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia recently launched its first Strategic Plan, with co-funding from the Federal Government, to raise the public image of the industry. The results thus far are promising.

A recent survey conducted by the Rural Industry Research and Development Corp., an independent government-funded body, showed that 77% of Australians actively support the commercial harvesting of kangaroo, whilst only 6% actively oppose it. Even more encouraging was the finding that 51% of Australians have eaten kangaroo and 87% of these would happily have it again.

The industry currently harvests about 3.2 million animals per year, which are processed for their skins and meat. It employs over 4,000 people, and generates over $200,000,000 (US$136 million) annually.

The harvest of the five commercial species of kangaroo (there are 48 species in all) is strictly controlled by government regulation. Each year the Conservation Agencies of each state government conduct aerial surveys of the open rangelands to estimate roo populations and the effect of seasonal conditions. After 25 years of refinement, the techniques used are extremely sensitive. They then set a sustainable harvest level and issue tags to licensed and accredited harvesters. These must be fixed to all animals taken, and accounted for throughout the production chain.

Strict and complex regulations control all aspects of the harvest and production. For example, harvesters must pass an examination after taking government-approved training courses covering such areas as hygienic procedures and animal welfare. The vehicle they use for harvesting must pass an inspection, and their competency with a firearm is assessed.

The kangaroo industry has been expanding by an average of 5% per year for the last 10 years, to the point where it is now one of Australia's best-performing rural industries, and also one which is environmentally responsible and wise.

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