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Thursday, August 4, 2005. Issue 3223. Page 1.
Kangaroo Meat Skips Off Shelves
By Conor Humphries
Russia last year imported more kangaroo meat than any other country in the world, but it's not clear whether those who ate it knew the meat on their plate began life skipping around in the Australian outback.
Of the $11 million worth of kangaroo meat exported from Australia to Russia in 2004, the majority was sold in Russia's Far East for sausage making, said Nina Mitropolskaya, senior business development manager at the Australian Embassy's trade department in Moscow.
But representatives of the meat industry in the Far East suggested that those eating the sausages might not know that they contain kangaroo meat.
The low-grade kangaroo meat used in the sausages is in a different class from the high-quality prime cuts that reach Moscow's pricier restaurants via Europe. The high-grade cuts are served as lean, nutritious red-meat delicacies, typically with less than 2 percent fat and high in protein and iron.
Anastasia Bukina, deputy director of a sausage distribution company in Vladivostok, said the fact that kangaroo meat was used in the products her company sells was not part of its marketing strategy.
"Of course not," she said. "We are not allowed to use kangaroo as the main ingredient. It's just used as an additional ingredient."
Bukina said that in the Far East, kangaroo meat was used in many factories and customers did not necessarily know this, as the quantities used are so small. "I think there's such a small amount that they wouldn't know," she said.
Tamara Volovik of Alfa International, which imports kangaroo meat to Khabarovsk, north of Vladivostok, was more cautious, saying that sausage makers "probably" informed their customers of what was in their sausages.
"If they do it officially, they probably write that it is kangaroo," she said. She declined to give the name of any of the factories her meat went to. "It's a delicate question," she said.
Price was not the only factor for producers, Volovik said.
"Of course there is demand from the factories, the meat is very lean, so it works well in sausages," she said. "It has very good technical characteristics. It has good mineral properties, iron and protein."
But she said that supplies from Australia had become harder to obtain, and the savings over beef, once 25 percent, have disappeared in the past year.
According to John Kelly, executive officer of the Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia, prices of kangaroo meat have gone up by 30 percent in the past year, due to increased demand for both high- and low-quality cuts.
He said that while Russia was the largest importer of kangaroo meat by volume, the country did not import any of the prime cuts directly, as the higher-quality meat is imported from Europe.
The low-grade meat, which is sometimes used in pet food in Australia, currently costs approximately 3 Australian dollars ($2.30) per kilogram, Kelly said.
He said higher-grade cuts, which cost about three times more, reach Moscow's pricier restaurants via third countries -- with Germany, France and Belgium being the most profitable markets for the delicacy.
Some problems have appeared in that trade, however, and the meat has been taken off the menu at Australian Open, Moscow's only Australian restaurant.
"It's not possible to buy kangaroo meat in Moscow at the moment," said manager Alexei Polikarpov.
A customs liaison at the restaurant's former supplier of the meat, Snezhny Mir, said that supplies of prime kangaroo meat had been halted since the beginning of the year, due to problems with licenses.
Some of the restaurant's customers were skeptical about how much appetite Russians had for kangaroo, even if those problems are solved.
Igor Ivanov, enjoying a beer with a friend, doubted kangaroo meat would ever be mainstream in Russia. "For the mass market -- I don't think so. It's a completely unknown product," he said.
As the commercial director of a small firm involved in the agriculture industry, he said the import of kangaroo meat had been suggested to him.
"I thought about it," he said. "I'm always thinking about products, but kangaroo wouldn't work in Russia."
His companion, Pavel Lavrov, was more positive.
"It tastes something like the Russian elk," he said, noting he tried kangaroo first on a trip to Australia. "It's not something I'd eat every day, but it's interesting."
As for the use of kangaroo meat in sausage-making in the Far East, he was not surprised.
"If they didn't write that there was kangaroo in it, everyone would eat it. If they wrote it was in there, then it would be an issue."
While all the customers in the restaurant who were asked said they would be willing to try kangaroo, customers at a sausage stand down the road all flatly refused.
Andrei Stradiyenko, a sausage seller at the stand, said he had never heard of kangaroo sausages before.
"Someone said something about ostrich once, that the meat was good. But it's the first time I've heard of eating kangaroo," he said. "For me, it's like eating a cat or a dog."
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; Si t'arrives à les retrouver, j'en ai mis sur les cacatoés , les kangous , les dingos , les chats devenus sauvages , les chameaux , les koalas , les émeus , les crapauds , les crocos , les aborig, (euh pardon , faute de goût) .....tous victime du , euh , "culling"
