'Tis the season to be jolly, even when others make silly suggestions like we should be eating kangeroo burgers instead of beef this Christmas. That's the proposal from Australian scientists who want us to consider switching to a marsupial diet after researching ways to combat climate change. There's some logic in the idea.
Apparently, eating kangeroo meat makes sense because they don't emit much methane. Their dominant gut flora are acetogens, not methanogens like cows and these convert hydrogen into acetate, a fatty acid used as an energy source. According to an article in FW's sister publication New Scientist, a cow is said to emit up to 600 times as much greenhouse gas as a kangeroo. The differences between species are pretty alarming:
* kangeroo 2635g CO2 equivalent per head per year
* sheep 141,540g CO2 equivalent per head per year
* beef 1,670,340g CO2 equivalent per head per year
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026873.100-how-kangaroo-burgers-could-save-the-planet.html
Concern for the climate isn't the only reason behind the research. Eight per cent of the energy spent by a ruminant's metabolism goes on creating methane. If livestock stopped making the gas, the energy saved could be diverted into making more meat and producing healthier animals. .
In New Zealand, boffins have decoded the genetic sequence of one of the main methane producing microbes in sheep and cow stomachs. By understanding the genes, they hope to find a way of knocking out the microbes that cause methane. It's clever stuff and we're likely to see more results on the work later next year.
Eating kangeroos isn't that mad. Australian Wildlife Services in Canberra calculate that replacing one third of their country's sheep and cattle with kangeroos would cut cattle emissions and reduce Australia's entire greenhouse gas output by three per cent. Kangeroo products are widely on sale in Australian supermakets and the market is said to be worth something like AU$250 million. Has anyone tried it - what does it taste like?
Anyway, enjoy your beef, lamb and turkey this Christmas.....
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