Huh. Then I wonder where the birds on the emu farm in the county just south of mine came from?
Another point, even if kangaroo meat is raised in Australia, such a thing may not work in the US. When animals native to other continents/climates/altitudes are sent to foreign lands, they don’t necessarily adapt. They’re not accustomed to the parasites of the other species, their dietary requirements are different from the standard species, and other infectious diseases that do little or no harm to the standard breeds can easily kill them.
Case in point: Alpacas and llamas.
Kangaroos are already susceptible to introduced diseases in Australia, and those kangaroos in the US are also very susceptible to the infectious agents found here.
There is small scale farming of alpaca and llamas in the UK. They’ve even started putting the ofdd llama in amongst sheep as they scare foxes away. I’m a bit surprised that there are so many cross species disorders they can be susceptible to. Come to think of it there are a couple of colonies of wallabies here as well (descended from escapees).
Might have been captive bred outside of Australia since before the export regulations tightened to forbid it, or just descended from a stock exported for some permitted purpose, such as research or exhibition.
That’s a very doubtful cite and the UTS one is similarly so. It seems to me to involve a steady state fallacy, in particular that if you farmed kangaroo, then you would only harvest by hunting and the quota of 15% would remain the same.
To put this in perspective, Australia has a cattle heard of 20M and can harvest nearly 10M in a year.
I am also very suspicious of an academic article funded by an animal protection lobby group. Does anyone doubt what it was their brief to find?
I don’t know that kangaroo raising for meat is viable but I am unconvinced by the cites given so far.
I’ve had kangaroo also. I thought it was terrible. :Mr. Yuck Smilie:
Oh, there is farming (or attempts at farming). Alpacas and llamas are interesting because they get both horse and cattle/goat/sheep diseases. Plus they have their own host-specific parasites, which can break havoc when they’re stressed (which they likely are being in a place they don’t belong). Woohoo!
Again, I know someone must be farming kangaroos, or collecting dead kangaroo meat really fast before it spoils, because it is part of a prescribed dog diet.
I thought that kangaroo meat in pet food came from culls of wild kangaroos.
Roadkill is cheap and often readily available.
And a lot of Americans won’t anything below medium… that could be one factor in the lack of popularity.
Eggs are not, technically, “live animals” - just saying.
If you’re going to farm exotic animals, I gather you get a lot more bang for your buck from ostriches as far as the meat yield goes.
Is that how they source it? I’d have thought that would fall below the standards for petfood - I mean, in an administrative sense - I know roadkill can be safe, I’ve eaten it myself in the past, it just seems like it would be difficult to control the quality even for pet food.
Actually, just a guess and a lame joke on my part. I really have no idea where pet-food quality 'roo comes from.
That would make sense.
The roadkill wouldn’t. Despite what many may think, the meat that is in pet foods, even if it is from the “yucky” animal parts, comes from remains of animals deemed fit for human consumption. Even the offal that may be fed to herbivores (which I don’t agree to that practice) has to come from remains fit for human consumption. Roadkill just won’t pass that regulation.
No, that’s not how it’s sourced, on any number of grounds.
Roadkill becomes carrion for the scavengers.
As stated, roos are harvested, not farmed.
They’re flighty, have large ranges and would require similar fencing to deer.
I’m not aware of any attempt to farm them commercially.
You can make some money from ostrich feathers, too. However, emu oil only comes from emu, and gather emu oil is a significant profit item for emu farmers on top of what they get for the meat and hides.
Thanks for telling me about culling. 
That would make more sense and be less difficult than kangaroo farms.
Well, if you don’t mind peddling snake oil…but farmers can (and do) render “ostrich oil” which is lovingly pimpedwith exactly the same bogus spiel as emu oil.
Ostrich leather is a big money-spinner, too. But the winner is that the meat yield on ostriches is much more than that of emu.
Ostrich eggs are quite marketable too - for food (equivalent to something like 20 hen eggs) and for their shells, as a craft material.
I agree that both emu and ostrich oil is overhyped, but using it in cosmetics without the bogus health benefit hype is no crazier than any other oil used. From a purely moisturizing viewpoint it should work as well as something like lanolin and gives people allergic to sheep an alternative.
Anyhow, I can hardly blame a farmer for providing a product for which there is a demand, especially when the same “crop” provides meat and leather as well.
The emu farm has had escapees before, which tend to cause a lot of chaos before they’re rounded up. I can only think that even larger birds could be more of an issue, both for confinement and as a potential hazard once out of the pen.