The Country 26/06/25: Chris Russell talks to Jamie Mackay

Our Australian correspondent talks methane emissions and asks if anyone is keen on some woolly mammoth mince!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
He's our guy across the Tasman, our long standing egg correspondent,
Chris Russell. Chris, I want to start with some good
news I think for Australian beef producers, which may not
in fact it won't necessarily be good news for New
Zealand grass fed beef producers. When it comes to emissions profiles.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Well that could well be. I mean, for years I've
argued that it's ridiculous how we calculate our methane emissions
because they're based on formulas which took no account of
the fact that a huge percentage of our cattle in
Australia are actually being fed on grain, the ones that
are being slaughtered anyway each year, and they're still using

(00:42):
a fifty year old calculation based in the United States
dairy cows known as the mow and turill equation, which
has this methodology that's based on basically grass fed animals.
Now the new methodology, based on research and the University
of New England, takes into account the feed ain't take
of the animals and adjust the methane emissions the amount

(01:03):
of ruppage and fiber and fat and so on that
they consume. And that's actually reduced our emissions calculation for
those animals off for all animals by fifty six percent.
For those animals, that's down by eighty five percent now
in Australia, and of cattle at goat of slaughter forty
percent of grain fed, which is you know, if you

(01:25):
look at the emissions of that, it's one point four
million tons of CO two equivalent, so you know, it's
a massive reduction. It'll certainly take some of the pressure off.
And while of course you still got to account, as
you mentioned to me off air, you've still got to
account for how you get the grain, and how you
transport it, and how you fertilize it and so on.
You have to do that with grass as well. So

(01:47):
over all the governments decide to revise these emissions and
I think that's going to be good news in terms
of the overhead cost of the farmers.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
Well, maybe good news for feed lotters, as I said
and Will suggested, not such good news for us here
in New Zealand where most of our beef as grass feed.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
Well, absolutely, but from our market point of view, a
lot of our markets one are not interested in grass
fed cattle. Japanese for example, don't like meat that's had
any grass anywhere near the meat that they've eaten for
one hundred days prior to slaughter. So if we want
to sell into that market, then we need to produce
grain fed. But that grain fed market's expanding all the time.

(02:27):
China is massive, And of course, just a little side
note about that, if you actually look at the future
demand for food security, I was doing a talk on
that the other day to a group of interested people.
If you look at the reason why we've got food
insecurity coming up and the extra demand for food over
the next fifty years, a lot of is not due

(02:47):
to the population. It's due to the fact that the
increased prosperity these countries who can now afford grain fed cattle.
And of course grain fooding is a lot less efficient
in terms of, you know, how you actually get those
animals to the market. So there's a lot of things
to weigh up here, but at least this is some
good news for those grain ped producers.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
Anyone for wooly mammoth months. This is you being taking
poetic license here, Chris Russell. Are you ruling on lab
grown meat?

Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yeah, Well, if they have actually looked at producing using
the DNA of wooly mouse that they've got from under
the ice up in the Arctica, and they can reproduce
that DNA. They can't actually make a wooly mammoth, but
they can certainly grow some meat based on that DNA.
And what's just been approved in Australia is lab grown

(03:40):
meat based on the DNA and from the DNA signature
of the particular parts of the animal. For example, the
one that's first of all going to the market is
a thing called Japanese quail, and they actually make a
liver from that and they get a foi grass. So
these restaurants can now buy a foi gras based on

(04:03):
a Japanese quail, which we don't really see very often,
but we're able to grow it in the lab. Now
this meet you can't decipher it from ordinary meat, and
the regulator in Australia has said, really it's completely safe,
there's no extra risks, so go in and start producing it.
So who knows next thing we might be getting, you know,
Tasmanian tiger steaks or wooly mammoth mints. Just taking off

(04:28):
phones out of the museum bit of DNA and you
can grow the meat yourself, Jamie.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
The world really is amazing play and dated as Chris
Russell