One of the world’s largest importers of kangaroo meat intends to formally ban its trade and sale, according to Irish agricultural news outlet Agriland.
Belgium is the second largest importer of kangaroo meat, followed by the European Union as a whole.
However, the sale and trade of kangaroo meat has become a tense issue in recent years. In October 2021, The Brussels Times covered an Australian report from the New South Wales parliament, which detailed brutal practices in the course of exports.
Among the concerns raised in the report were the Australian government’s failure to adequately monitor whether kangaroo hunting was carried out humanely and its lack of data on the number of orphaned joeys (juvenile kangaroos) killed as part of legal culls.
At the time, the Times quoted Eurogroup for Animals executive director Reineke Hameleers as stressing that “there is no monitoring mechanism to ensure that animals have been killed in the least harmful way.” In 2020, major supermarkets in Belgium, such as Aldi and Lidl, stopped selling kangaroo meat.
Bans on hunting, fishing and aspects of the wildlife trade, such as bushmeat, which is obtained from wild animals, serve several important purposes in terms of conservation, biodiversity and public health.
Exotic game meats, in particular, can serve as a vector for zoonotic pathogens that jump from wildlife populations to humans.
Although Australia has long struggled to control its large kangaroo population, animal welfare concerns still prevail in Flanders.
The Belgian government has officially informed the European Parliament that it plans to ban the sale of kangaroo meat by July, a mandatory first step towards a policy change that could affect broader trade in the region.
“Commercial kangaroo hunting in Australia is the largest slaughter of wild land animals in the world,” the Flemish government notice read in part, according to Agriland.
“Every year, between 1.1 and 1.3 million kangaroos are killed in a harmless way for the animals in order to sell various ingredients on the global market,” he continues. “Flanders contributes disproportionately to animal suffering in Australia.”
According to Agriland, although the sale of kangaroo meat has been discontinued in supermarket chains in Belgium, it is still available in pet food and butcher shops.
The Belgian government statement indicates that, in addition to kangaroo meat, the ban will prohibit the import of kangaroo skins used to make “sports shoes and motorcycle jackets.”
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