Consumption of kangaroo meat has jumped 400%. Meet the man putting roo on your plate

KANGAROO meat continues to increase in popularity. Meet one of the men putting our national symbol on your plate.

YOU have to hand it to kangaroo shooter Heath Tippet. He knows how to make a bloke feel nervous. The two of us are riding in his specially converted Toyota Landcruiser, bumping over the scrub and the saltbush having already turned off the dirt road.

It feels like we are miles from anywhere. In fact we are about 30km east of Burra at a place called Koomooloo.

It’s dark. And I’m a city boy who has never seen anything shot first hand in his life. In fact, I’m more than a little nervous about how I will react to the brutal reality close up. It’s not something that goes unnoticed and as we head out into the black Tippet asks, all innocent, in that dry, laconic country fashion : “Have you ever seen Wolf Creek?’’ As it happens I haven’t, but I’m familiar with its basic theme of John Jarrett as a roo hunter slaughtering a bunch of tourists in the outback.

“Probably for the best,’’ he says with a laugh. I don’t join in the merriment.

Strangely enough, some of the roos used as props in Wolf Creek could have been shot by Tippet. The carcasses swinging on Jarrett’s ute were supplied by Macro Meats, Australia’s dominant kangaroo meat supplier, and the company Tippet works for. The Adelaide-based company controls around 90 per cent of the industry and has spent many years trying to invigorate it, raise standards and broaden its mainstream appeal.

And it’s had some success. In the past five years the consumption of kangaroo has grown by 400 per cent, although it still only makes up less than 1 per cent of Australia’s total consumption of meat. It’s been an impressive recovery from Macro which almost went under in 2011 because drought, then repeat floods, stopped their ability to supply kangaroos.

Tippet in his battered blue jeans, brown Chowilla baseball cap, dusty boots and work-worn green shirt is the front line of the process. He is one of about 1500 shooters employed by Macro around the country and has been hunting roos for nine years. His explanation for his career choice is simple enough: “I like working by myself and I like living in the country.’’

Despite my reservations and squeamishness, about watching roos get pinged by Tippet’s .223 rifle, there is something clinical and, if not bloodless then certainly efficient, about the whole process. To shoot the roo Tippet fires while sitting in the Landcruiser’s driver’s seat using a platform attached to the front door. This is a legal requirement. Standing and shooting is banned as it heightens the risk of a missed shot. Or worse a shot that only wounds. Kangaroos must be killed by a single bullet to the head. Anything else will result in the shooter being fined and his job could be in peril.

The 34 year-old Tippett is out here every night the weather conditions permit. Sometimes he patrols these paddocks, by prior arrangement with the landowner, until dawn. If he bags 40 it’s a good night, 30 is average and 20 is marginal. He gets paid by weight of the roo and receives around 90c a kilogram, so an average 30kg roo is worth about $27.

It’s a night of ceaseless roaming. The ute bangs and rolls, dips and dives over the darkened landscape. Tippet drives with his right hand, while his left operates the spotlight on the roof, via a handle in the cabin.

The white beam rolls across the night like a spotlight seeking out a German bomber in a World War II film. We see plenty of roos but Tippet is not quick on the trigger. His attuned eyes have seen and dismissed potential kills as female, too young, too small before I have spotted anything at all.

When he identifies a likely type he stops the ute. The spotlight settles on a roo 100m away as it nibbles on the saltbush. Even wearing the ear muffs, the report of the gun is startlingly loud inside the cabin.

It is instantaneous death. The kangaroo hasn’t a clue what hit him. And it’s always a him. Macro stopped shooting female roos in 2011, mainly because of the bad publicity it caused. When a female is shot, you also have to kill the joey that is inevitably there as well. Not a good look.

The first thing Tippet does when we reach the roo is check it’s a clean kill and the animal is dead. There are no worries there. The bullet has put a hole through the skull. The roo in this case is a western grey. Macro only shoots four of the 54 species of kangaroo that make up the population. Red, eastern and western greys together make up about 90 per cent of the kangaroos killed in any year.

The shooter then turns butcher. He straps on his apron, hangs his knife on a belt around his waist and starts to bleed the roo with a quick slash to the throat. He then grabs the 30kg animal, hangs it on the rail that runs around the Landcruiser and slides it to the back of the ute.

Tippet fetches a pair of loppers, the same as the one you would use to prune a tree, but much, much sharper and quickly snips off the legs and paws, before turning back to the knife to open up the stomach and cut off the tail. The head is also removed.

The whole operation takes about five minutes. By the end the kangaroo is gutted, ready to be placed at the end of the night in Macro’s cold storage facility back in Burra, and Tippet is off to find his next kill.

Beyond the blood and the gore, it is an impressively well-organised operation. Part of this is because of the high standards that modern food hygiene imposes. Every point in the process is recorded. Tippet places an irremovable tag in the carcass that records the date, time and place of the kill so if anything goes wrong it can be traced. The tag stays with the animal through the production cycle. It’s a way of increasing quality control.

Despite his laidback manner and sense of independence, Tippet has welcomed the increase in regulations and standards in the industry even though on the surface it makes his job more complicated.

“It’s not making it harder, you just have to be more thorough,’’ he says. “Twenty years ago no one cared because kangaroo was just for pet food consumption.’’

And this is where Ray Borda comes in.

Borda started Macro in 1987, almost accidentally.

He was an engineer by trade, but had a sideline in racing greyhounds. Borda hit the news recently when Macro, which was the biggest sponsor of greyhound racing, cancelled the deal in the wake of the live-baiting scandal which shook the sport after a report on Four Corners.

But when he was racing greyhounds in the 1970s Borda found it difficult and expensive to source meat to feed his dogs so started Pet Stop. He had eight of the pet food shops up and running until, firstly, the government put up sales tax – then in 1981 there was a meat substitution scandal, where some “beef” exported to the United States turned out to be anything from horse, to kangaroo to donkey.

One of the government’s solutions to prevent a repeat was to dye all pet food “brilliant blue’’ so it couldn’t be switched for meat destined for human consumption.

“So within six months I went from having a viable business that was growing to a business that was trying to sell blue meat instead of red meat and at 15 per cent more,’’ Borda says.

Sales dived and he needed to find a way around the problem before he went broke. He identified kangaroo meat as his swiftest growing line but couldn’t bring it into his shop without turning it blue.

Instead he started speaking to some of the independent supermarkets and persuaded them to stock frozen kangaroo mince. He was fortunate that South Australia was the only state where it was legal to eat kangaroo. The product was aimed at pet owners but as it was technically for human consumption it avoided the dreaded dye.

To his surprise though people started buying it to eat themselves.

“In those days there were no emails or faxes, so I started getting letters from people saying I love your kangaroo mince,’’ he says. “I couldn’t believe it. People were eating it? So I had to try it. I thought, you know what, it isn’t that bad after all.’’

Today, Borda is a passionate advocate for his company and his cause.

He has fought to change consumer sentiment that eating our national symbol is an odd thing to do. He has also had to fight animal rights activists who believe the killing of kangaroos is wrong, and has even taken them out hunting to show them how it’s done.

Borda has a little scripted response when the issue is raised.

“I always say most kangaroos have approximately 2000 good days, that’s how long they live, and just one bad day,’’ he says. “You consider that against chicken and a lot of other animals. They don’t have 2000 days.’’

It’s fair to say he has a point. The kangaroo dies without pain in its natural environment. Compare that to the fate of a cow or a sheep herded with hundreds of others into an abattoir.

Borda also makes the point in many parts of the country, kangaroos are regarded as a pest and farmers are only too happy to see them knocked off.

The kangaroo population last year was around 54 million. The government-mandated quota would allow for 8.8 million kangaroos to be harvested but the total number killed was about 1.6 million.

Borda also likes to spruik the environmental and health benefits of kangaroo.

“Kangaroos are regarded as being one of the most environmentally-friendly animals in the world,’’ he says.

He points out they are soft pawed animals compared to hooved creatures such as cattle, so contribute less to land degradation, they eat and drink less, you don’t need to clear land for them, they don’t emit methane. Their meat is also low in fat, high in protein.

Not without some justification then Borda refers to kangaroos as “magical animals’’.

In his enthusiasm he tells me the frankly bizarre statistic that 60 per cent of vegetarians who resume eating meat for health reasons turn to kangaroo. Even stranger he mentions a group that call themselves “kangatarians’’ because the only meat they eat is kangaroo.

Yet, the eating of kangaroo is still something of a minority past-time.

This is despite advances which means Macro Meats products are on sale in Coles and Woolworths supermarkets and by the company introducing its Paroo brand, a premium brand aimed at restaurants.

Premium cuts such as saddle or loin are also much cheaper – around 30 per cent – than beef or lamb equivalents.

Borda has long targeted high-end restaurants and innovative chefs believing if they adopt kangaroo, it will eventually filter down into the broader population.

His efforts have resulted in Borda winning the products category at the 2009 national Entrepreneur of the Year award and winning the Duncan McGillivray award at last year’s SA Food Industry gongs. Both recognised him as a pioneer in the food world for his work promoting kangaroo.

Still, one of Adelaide’s top chefs, Jock Zonfrillo, laments kangaroo is still “one of the most underutilised resources in terms of protein that Australia has got’’.

The Scottish-born chef says kangaroo “still suffers from ‘it’s on the coat of arms’ voices murmuring in the background’’ and people still feeling strange about eating the national symbol.

But in his high-end restaurant Orana, which uses exclusively Australian ingredients and was named as The Advertiser’s restaurant of the year, Zonfrillo says people are “gobsmacked by how delicious it is’’.

One offering at Orana is the charred kangaroo tartare, gubbinge, grass and wild garlic.

“They imagine it to be super gamey,’’ he says. “But it’s not, and they imagine it to be a little bit in your face.

“I think they are expecting it to be a bit offally and it’s the exact opposite.’’

He also says its a myth that kangaroo is hard to cook. But because it’s a lean meat, it’s best cooked medium rare. Anything more can make it tough to eat.

But Zonfrillo is also critical of Macro, even though he buys their meat, for not doing more to expand the range of what is possible with kangaroo. He wants to see greater variety, he wants differences in regions and species acknowledged and celebrated because they all have different flavours.

If you buy Macro kangaroo at Coles or Woolies, while it is labelled as “open range’’, the consumer is not told where in Australia it was shot or what species it is. Although, this is changing. Macro is now offering species-specific product to its export customers.

Still, Zonfrillo reckons what the industry needs is more innovation.

“Someone will come in and rip that industry apart and start doing amazing things with it,’’ he says. “It’s in the post, it’s on the way and when it does develop, chefs will be very happy about it and I think the general public will, too.’’

Richard Gunner, who runs the Feast chain of premium butchers, says he “takes his hat off’’ to what Macro has achieved in pushing kangaroo into the mainstream, but says the company’s success has also made it much harder for other companies to get into the industry.

Gunner says government regulations contributed by creating barriers so high that it is hard for a new players to get into the business. The problem is, he says, the government applies a one-size fits all approach to the slaughter of meat. So the same rules apply whether you are slaughtering sheep, cows or kangaroo.

“Food hygiene people are trying to overlay a system that works in a facility where you are bringing thousands of animals from hundreds of properties,’’ he says. “If you are harvesting in the wild you are not going to have the levels of cross contamination.’’

Gunner is not pushing for food standards to be abandoned. He just thinks they should be more flexible and advocates an “opt-in/opt-out approach’’ where consumers are given the information about how an animal is processed and can make up their own minds.

He thinks it’s ridiculous, for example, that while he has a permit to shoot 100 kangaroos a year on his farm, he cannot use that meat and instead must bury it. Gunner also points out kangaroo meat is subject to much higher standards of hygiene than another wild harvested product – seafood.

“It does seem bizarre to me that fish, which can really make you sick without having any real idea that it is going to doesn’t even have real hygiene regulations,’’ he says.

Whereas he says with kangaroo his “understanding is there has never been a case of food poisoning traced back to kangaroo meat in the history of Australian settlement’’.

Borda though is satisfied with the safety environment and sees it as an important component in building public confidence with kangaroo meat. “I push for more compliance and more guidelines because I am very, very protective of the industry,’’ he says. “It’s a hard enough job educating the world without having something go wrong, accidentally or not.’’

Macro has a licence to export to around 70 countries, but concentrates on about 30. Europe, particularly Germany and Holland are the company’s biggest markets. Last week the company sent containers to the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, Japan and Vietnam.

The next big things, according to Borda, will be China and India. Like every other Australian company that sells its stuff overseas, Macro sees the billions of people in those two countries and imagines the possibilities. Russia is also expected to come back on stream soon if economic sanctions against that country are lifted.

They need regulatory approval to move into China but Borda refers to it as the “holy grail’’.

He says persistence is the key. And he says persistence is something he is good at. If he wasn’t, he and his company would have disappeared long ago.

And there have been tough times. It was only three years ago Borda approached the state government for some financial assistance because Macro had hit a rocky road. The long drought that blighted Australia broke in 2008 but was replaced by torrential floods which made it impossible for Macro’s shooters to do their job. At times Borda thought his company could not survive.

“I paid myself nothing for 2½ years,’’ he says. “I lived off whatever reserves I had and saved as many jobs as I could.’’

The state government support was never forthcoming but the environmental situation gradually eased and supply increased to meet the demand that Borda says was always there.

“You have to believe in what you are doing, you have to be passionate about it and you have to be twice as good as anybody else that is in the meat business.’’

But whatever else Borda is, he is an optimist. After almost three decades in the business he believes he is on the threshold of something big.

“Food is what the world wants and we provide a unique food,’’ he says. “My payday is in front of me and that is what I’m working for now.’’ ●