cruelty to joeys exposed

For the first time since the kangaroo industry began operating in Australia over 50 years ago, a damning government study has exposed inherent, widespread cruelty within the kangaroo meat and skins industry confirming fears that orphaned baby kangaroos are suffering severe mental and physical trauma at the hands of professional shooters and the kangaroo industry.

The government research report titled “Improving the humaneness of commercial kangaroo harvesting” was commissioned by the government’s Rural Industries Research Development Corporation and published in 2014, 30 years after the RSPCA first discovered systemic cruelty to joeys within the commercial kangaroo industry.

This compelling report has revealed that professional shooters for the kangaroo meat and skins industry are routinely killing pouch young using practices that breach their code of practice, leading to prolonged pain and suffering for orphaned baby kangaroos. It also revealed that 99% of at-foot joeys are abandoned by professional shooters after they shoot their mother, leaving thousands of orphans to die every year from starvation, stress and predation. The research also confirms that dependent at-foot young who become separated from their mother, suffer severely mentally and physically as a result of losing their mother.

This image is of an orphaned pouch joey bludgeoned to death by professional shooters during the government study.

The image was obtained directly from researcher Dr Steve McLeod.

Throughout this government study, researchers McLeod and Sharp repeatedly observed professional shooters abandon orphaned at foot joeys after shooting their mother, leaving them to die all alone in the bush. The researchers also observed shooters swinging pouch joeys by their feet, and as they wriggled and cried out they bashed them with iron bars, against utility racks and rocks, stomped on their heads and decapitated them without stunning, without ever checking if the joey had died before throwing them in the dirt. These practices are all in breach of the Code of Practice and have the potential the cause prolonged pain and suffering.

However the Australian government has shelved this controversial report, have never referred to it, and appear to be deliberately keeping its findings a secret from the public, while continuing to promote the kangaroo meat and skins industry as ethical and humane, and ignoring their own scientist’s recommendations in the report that “ Not telling the public about the welfare impacts of commercial kangaroo harvesting should no longer be an option” (McLeod & Sharp, 2014).

“State government data has revealed that in the past two years alone, more than a quarter of million (260,000+) female kangaroos have been slaughtered by the kangaroo meat and skins industry, leaving hundreds of thousands of joeys to die a cruel death at the hands of professional shooters and the kangaroo industry every year”.

• Leader – 31 July 2016 – Kangaroo meat puts commercial industry and animal welfare groups into conflict
• Sydney Morning Herald – 22 July 2011 – Kangaroos aren’t a viable food option
• LA Times – 24 April 2009 – Joeys are decapitated, clubbed as byproduct of commercial kangaroo hunting industry
• Daily Mail UK – 24 April 2009 – Thousands of baby kangaroos clubbed to death in new Australian government ruling