Export miracle: Where Aussie meat is cheaper abroad

An Australian-themed restaurant in Prague, Czech Republic, imports kangaroo meat for the same price that Australians can buy it for in the supermarket. And it’s not as if there’s a huge demand for it. 

The Czech Republic is one of the many EU countries that imports kangaroo meat from Australia. 

But this restaurant in Vinohrady, a trendy neighborhood of Prague, is one of the few – if not the only – business in the Czech Republic that serves kangaroo on its menu, owner Ashley McGynn says. While their most popular dish is meat pies made with beef, they also serve a burger made of pulled kangaroo meat.

“We sell about 5kg of ‘roo meat a week, which is about 30 portions,” McGynn says. “But we do find that a lot of tourists will order the kangaroo, not so much the locals.”

The restaurant buys the meat through Bidfood, an import company, for 238czk per kilo, which is about $14AUD. In Woolworths supermarket in Australia, the same type of kangaroo meat can be bought for about $15 per kilo. 

According to Jakub Trtík, Bidfood’s director of the purchasing department of meat and game, Czech people are conservative when it comes to their choice of meat. Chicken and pork are most consumed while kangaroo meat is “not a normal kind of meat” for them. Due to the low demand, there is no pressure for a quick transport, which usually takes two months for the frozen kangaroo meat to arrive in Europe. “In addition,” says Trtík, “the price of kangaroo meat is comparable to beef, which is one of the more expensive types of meat to buy in the Czech Republic.”

An average of three million free-ranging kangaroos in Australia are commercially killed and processed by the kangaroo industry each year. A resilient species that are pests to farmers, the animals are culled for agricultural purposes, and for meat consumption. 

Australia exports about 4000 tonnes of kangaroo annually, to over 60 countries. 

Příspěvek vznikl v rámci kurzu Foreign Correspondence pod vedením doc. PhDr. Alice Němcové Tejkalové a Ph.D. Mgr. Veroniky Mackové, Ph.D.