[Reason] Why Are Members of Congress Trying To Ban the Importation of Kangaroo Meat?

I hear this dudes been visiting Capitol Hill, telling lawmakers that it'd be a shame if they happened to fall down the stairs and get a nasty injury after eating a kangaroo burger.

I have no problem eating any animal as long as they aren't endangered or are being "harvested" with wanton cruelty and it is done safely.

I'm guessing a lot of the people talking about the "right" to eat any animal you want were sharing Facebook posts about sub-humans eating bats and pangolins this time last year.

 

A surprise in every pouch, mate!

 

Australia’s beloved kangaroos are now controversial pests
They’re the nation’s hopping icons. They also destroy crops and cause car accidents. Is killing them the solution?

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/australia-kangaroo-beloved-symbol-becomes-pest

If you've eaten meat pies in Australia you've probably ingested some kangaroo meat. Seems like an odd thing to ban, is there a cattle or poultry lobby somewhere funding this behind the scenes?

 

Kangaroo is tasty.

And they truly can be destructive pests, just like feral hogs in the US.

 

Though I've lived in the US all my life, I'm also an Australian citizen. Been there for some long trips. Roos aren't endangered or anything so far as I'm aware. I can't think of a rational reason to ban kangaroo meat other than arbitrarily deciding they're cuter than cows or whatever else.

 

Yes, but how many Kangaroos are illegally migrating across the U.S. border from Mexico? Consider the separation of all the little Joeys.

 

Is it good like steak or do you have to simmer it like tough meats? I now have a hankering to try it.

 

I mean that’s the reason why we’ve banned horse/dog/cat meat

 

I thought the dog and cat meat prohibition act changed that to make consumption illegal, guess I’ll have to re-read it.

Still, it being federally illegal to sell in commercial business, or for slaughter houses to handle them is a pretty effective ban.

What do you think about the those meats being banned commercially, and what is the acting differentiator in those meats being banned as opposed to other meats?

 

That’s dumb. Kangaroo meat is delicious.

 

The socialization with humans factor.

Dogs and cats and to a lesser but not insignificant extent horses have evolved with humans ever since there were humans. They're seen more as intelligent symbiotic partners. There's a lot more to do with it than that (like personality, insert Jules from Pulp Fiction), but that's the gist of it.

Also...most people do not and have not eaten predators and scavengers for a long time, ala varmints, coyotes, wolves, cats here in the US. Nasty, greasy, not pleasant as food.

Bears were apparently the exception back in frontier/native days, but they ate a huge amount of vegetation along with any meat/fish they could find.

 

Bear isn’t very good but the fat can be used for different purposes. As for the most disgusting thing I have eaten... it isn’t insects or alligator or nutria or fermented fish (which is horrendous)... it is dog, many years ago in South Korea. It has an extremely strong smell. The people in Korea were bathing the meat in hot sauce to cover the taste.

I was offered some in Vietnam. I passed.

 

Black bear was a routine delicacy back in the 1800's in the west, and still in Alaska etc, which is why you don't see them outside of the mountain/forest wilderness areas (just like elk and mule deer before them, humans drove them out of the grasslands)

I've only seen pics, but a skinned, hanging black bear looks uncannily like a human.

 

The bear meat wasn’t as bad as the dog (like half as bad) but it still was nasty. I am not surprised it was popular, especially in an area like the West. It still is a mammal that eats some vegetation. The meat was soft and very fatty like pork. It was like a mixture of mutton and rancid beef. Oddly, the solidified fat smelled pleasant like hydrogenated vegetable oil and duck fat. Supposedly the bear fat is excellent for taste with pemmican.

Dog smelled like standing water and wet cardboard.

 

A lot of hunters still eat bears.

100% it's cultural and has to do with the nature of the animals. Most predators aren't exactly docile animals you could farm and expect to grow nice and fat off of a pasture, nor most would you keep as a pet lol.

But my point was, just because we have a fondness for these animals, doesn't necessarily explain why it should be illegal to eat them over other animals. I mean, it does explain it, but the reasoning is essentially "they are cute, we like them, we've had great times" and whatnot. It's not that the animals aren't edible, as we see in other cultures. So if we want to declare Kangaroos as too cute to kill, why not?

I just dislike the inconsistency on these things.

 

Right, it's very much a Native American, First Nations kind of thing these days. Back in the day it was sold in mining towns next to anything else they could sell for fresh food.

I do know that you can't eat polar bear liver, because there's so much vitamin (something) in it that you will die.

 

Right, the meat has to be cooked well done because of parasites and yes the liver can kill people. I also want to say because it is an omnivore the taste and smell of the bear fat depends on what it’s diet is.