Beef consumption per head of population in Australia has not changed since 1960. Ross Garnaut and others fanciful suggestion that Australians should shift from eating beef and lamb to Kangaroo would entail a massive re - education program of consumers and or incredibly cheap retail prices.
The below graphs sourced from ABARE show that the retail price is an all important factor in what meat familes buy and consume.
You can see from the graph that retail beef prices in 2006 were just above those of 46 years previous. Poultry on the other hand was just 20% of its 1960 equivalent. Note the big beef price drop during the beef crash of the 1970’s.
Now for the Consumption per capita (person) for the same period.
Things we can learn from the two graphs.
1. Note the only time that beef consumption has risen during the 46 year period was during the 1970’s cattle crash. Except for this period beef consumption been flat lining for the last four and a half decades. This is despite Meat and Livestock Australia spending millions of dollars of producers levy money on domestic promotion over the last decade.
2. Sky rocketing consumption of Poultry (900% increase) is in direct relation to the plummeting retail price.
From the two graphs it would appear that if Roo meat was to retail at about the same price as Poutry, Australian consumption would automatically dramatically increase.
There is the conundrum. If Roo meat has to be sold at those sort of prices, how do producers make any money from the enterprise? Currently beef producers receive about $2.50 - $3.50 a kilo carcass price for beef. Roo carcass price is approximately 0.70 cents - 0.90 cents a kilo carcass weight.
There are about 3 million Roo’s killed each year for consumption. Of the 3 million 30% go to pet food and 70% to human consumption. Of that 70% - 30% is sold domestically and 70% is exported, with the largest market Russia. The Russians cheifly use it as a beef substitute filler in cheaper sausage meats.
Senator Ron Boswell touches on why producing cheap Roo meat is an impractical dream.
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Tags: ABARE, Beef, Domestic Beef Consumption, Eating Kangaroos, Lamb, Mutton, Pork, Poultry, Ron Boswell, Ross Garnaut
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization gets it wrong.
The Nelson Mail:
They had included deforestation in the figures!!