Comments on: Don’t Have a Cow, but Australia’s Got Another Solution!

By: Anna Rose

Anna Rose — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 02:01:11 +0000

Hey guys, instead of transferring roo bacteria into cow stomach, people should – if they really HAVE to continue eating meat – just eat kangaroo instead. It’s much better for the land as their paws are softer than cow hoofs, thus cause less soil compaction. It’s already available in lots of Aussie supermarkets.

By: Geoff Russell

Geoff Russell — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 10:32:31 +0000

Klieve has been going for about 5 years, but other people have been going a lot
longer (I have found papers going back to 1988). Why would anybody want to
put kangaroo gut microbes into a ruminant when ruminants are more efficient at
turning pasture into meat? Farmers have already shown they won’t accept anything
which reduces productivity.

Secondly, there have been 2 studies looking at the maxiumum possible tonnage of
meat which can be produced from kangaroos. They both came in at about 2% of the
amount of beef currently produced in Australia. They are actually small animals once
you dress the carcass
and most of the meat is junk, you only get about 11kg per carcase and
only about 2kg of that is “good” quality — the rest is pet food at best.
People who think you can replace cattle by kangaroos clearly don’t know anything
about either industry.

Thirdly, red meat kills people. It gives then heart disease and colorectal cancer, two
name 2 of Australia’s most deadly health problems. Kangaroo meat may reduce
heart problems, but it still contains heme iron which is what damages your DNA and
gives you colorectal cancer.

Lastly, between 1990 and 2004 (I haven’t got figures later than that yet) Australian
cattle farmers were deforesting about 400,000 hectares of native forest annually in
one of the planet’s biggest attacks on wildlive and biodiversity just to produce
a food which kills people and heats up the planet.

Oh, yes, I almost forgot. Checkout page 206 of IPCC AR4 (Chapter 2). You will find
that globally, annual methane and carbon dioxide emissions have pretty much
the same impact on warming. The usual comparison which says that methane has about
1/3 of the impact compares the last 50 years of methane emissions with the last
1000 years of CO2 emissions. Which is why James Hansen has been recommending
40% reductions in anthropogenic methane emissions for quite some years.

By: Jay Alt

Jay Alt — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 04:08:49 +0000

Maybe you shouldn’t call it a solution unless one is found.
Dr. Klieve has been working on this stuff for 5 years.
Maybe he needs more help?

http://www.tropicalgrasslands.asn.au/Newsletter_archive/TGS%20NL%20Jun%2003.pdf

By: Chris Judd

Chris Judd — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 00:06:10 +0000

It amazes me that people so smart as to worry about greenhousegas; don’t know that pigs and chickens don’t eat grass; (just rumenants like cows)And that “grass” is the “great healer” of overfarmed–overcultivated “grain on grain” farms. Grain after grain will destroy the organic matter (top soil); it needs a rest (planted back in sod or grass for a few years) to regain itself; if not; you will eventually get “the dirty thirties” again. These “educated” people also don’t know that not all the planet is good for growing grain. Some of it is too rockey; some fields to small to use “economical” equipment in, some too wet, some too hilly, some just too far north (like most of Canada) for viable grain production. Some of these “smart” people may not know that the most efficient crop of grain to plant and harvest is the crop following a sod (grass) field; because it takes NO CHEMICAL NITROGEN, and if manure (that animal by-product) is spread before planting grain; NO CHEMICAL PHOS. OR POTASH is needed either! If you dispute my story; just ask ANY OLD FARMER! (not some enviromentalist)