Eating is just as much a necessity as it is a pleasure, fulfilling our nutritional needs while at the same time also titillating our taste buds and stoking the pleasure center of our brains. It might not even be a stretch to suggest that every time we saddle up to a plate, we engage in an act of pure joy...but our culture learned a long time ago that when it comes to identifying the specific dietary choices that we make, we can insulate ourselves from whatever guilt we might be experiencing by relying on euphemisms to save the day. You know, using words like "pork", "beef" and "venison" rather than declaring that we're eating pig, cow and deer for dinner. (Apparently chicken got the short end of the stick, but we'll save that discussion for a rainy day.)
The very same concept applies to the manner in which animal flesh is packaged for our mass consumption - none of the jarring reality of their life and death is revealed to us as we mosey down the aisles of our favorite grocery store. We may be aware that what we are seeking to augment our taco salad recipe with once lived in deplorable conditions or was likely dining on a slurry of antibiotics and junk food, but somehow we conveniently forget. With no visual cues such as snouts, ears and fur blatantly present, our grocery stores continue to offer us an orderly, seemingly sanitized safe haven away from the bloody business fueling our carnivorous appetites. De-animalization...it's what's for dinner.
Would you feel as warm and fuzzy about eating a kangaroo? What if it were called "australus," (a proposed name which the Kangaroo Industry Association is considering among other questionable contenders such as kangasaurus, jumpmeat and rooviande)? Perhaps you'd warm up to the idea given the following statistics from the Sydney Morning Herald -- kangaroo harvesting is not only sustainable but also far more environmentally friendly than conventional meat industries since the marsupials consume less water, release far less methane gas and cause a lot less grazing pressure on land. Apparently someone must be eating the Aussie icon because 3 million are killed each year, 40% of which are transformed into pet food.
The remaining 60% that are harvested annually are apparently fueling a new movement in Australia called, you guessed it, kangatarianism. The semi-vegetarian trend, born out of eco and humanitarian grounds, calls for followers to augment their largely plant based diet with kangaroo flesh. Proponents say that the high protein, low fat meat is a healthy choice since it is entirely organic, antibiotic-free and far easier on Mother Nature -- roos are harvested right from the wild rather than via man-made feedlots, helping to keep their ever prolific numbers in check. Amazingly, there are even five different forms of kangatarianism, including individuals who augment their veggie-based diet with just seafood and kangaroo (Pesco-kangatarianism) or poultry and kangaroo (Pollo-kangatarianism) or all three (Pollo-pesco-kangatarianism). A Greenpeace report written by Dr. Mark Diesendorf even states that "reducing beef consumption by 20 per cent and putting Skippy on the dinner plate instead would cut 15 megatonnes of greenhouses gases from the atmosphere by 2020". Do you think that it's really possible to be a part time vegetarian who takes one for the team? Um...but we're talking about kangaroo.
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