What's wrong skip?

It's been a tough year for Australian agriculture, but just as it seems that commodity prices may have bottomed, a $270 million rural industry – the once burgeoning kangaroo meat export business – is on its knees.

A slip-up at a Queensland processing facility earlier this year brought Australia's fledgling roo meat industry to a near stand-still. The business's biggest trade partner, Russia, shut its doors to kangaroo imports on August 1 after traces of E. coli bacteria were detected in a shipment from Australia.

On the back of a growing appetite for the lean meat, which is low in fat and high in protein and zinc, Russia was taking two thirds of Australia's $120 million in kangaroo exports each year.

But prospects are now bleak for 24 kangaroo processing companies throughout Australia whose export licences Russia has suspended.

Market front-runners such as United Game Processors (UGP) have seen promising growth in production levels recede to a trickle, and several facilities have had to close. Harvesters across the country have seen prices drop from a high of $1.30 per kilogram, to a meagre 70 cents. The flow on effects from the disastrous Russian trade hiccup include losses for farmers who depended on shooters to defend their crops from marauding macropods.

So far, the drive to reinstate trade with Russia has been left up to Queensland, which is home to the largest section of the industry. Only Victoria and the Northern Territory do not sustain kangaroo industries.

Anna Bligh met with Russian agriculture officials last month to discuss the resurrection of exports, and a delegation from Russia is due early in the new year to inspect kangaroo processing facilities and ensure that Australian protocols match their own country's meat handling requirements.

And it's becoming clear that the Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia (KIAA) will not be content to return to a state of 'business as usual'. Workshops have already taken place across Queensland to familiarise kangaroo harvesters and processors with Russian standards of meat management.

Currently, the sector's standards are not up to the level of the beef industry, in part due to a complex regulatory environment which differs from state to state, and also because of the unavoidable differences between killing an animal in its natural environment and despatching it in the setting of an abattoir.

The industry's predicament hasn't escaped the notice of Canberra. The federal minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Tony Burke, is off to the World Expo in Shanghai in May 2010 to promote kangaroo meat, and set about winning the hearts and minds of Chinese consumers.

China has given broad-based approval to accepting imports of kangaroo meat, and as early as this week, the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS) may issue an invitation for Chinese officials to visit kangaroo processing facilities in Australia and discuss trade details.

It's a mere fraction of Australia's meat sector, but as Ross Garnaut flagged last year in his climate change review, this native emblem could be headed for big things. Garnaut proposed the improbable step of farming kangaroos and boosting their numbers from 34 million currently, to 240 million by 2020.

The farming of kangaroos, which emit negligible amounts of methane (unlike cattle), would allow a reduction in beef cattle numbers by 7 million, and sheep by 34 million; reducing net greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of a huge 16 megatonnes of CO2 over the next ten years (methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2).

With the industry already going through a significant shake-up, it seems now is a timely opportunity to put some serious work into reforms.

There are whispers within the industry that there are underlying political currents behind Russia's kangaroo ban, and factors extending beyond contamination concerns.

But, if the industry is to rebound, it would do well to take a pro-active stance and use the present trade challenge as a catalyst to guarantee a uniform professionalism at all stages of the meat handling process, and ensure the kangaroo industry comes up to world-class standards.