Exotic Meat Campaign

Urgent Action:

On the run-up to Christmas, supermarket chain Lidl, Fortnum & Mason and Harvery Nichols are shockingly selling reindeer meat in many of their stores across the UK. Please help us stop them.

Click here to find out how you can help.

'Exotic meats'

Viva! campaigns against the sale of 'exotic meats' and also the factory farming of animals such as ostrich, emu and crocodile. Our campaign has led to all the major supermarkets withdrawing kangaroo, ostrich and crocodile meats from sale - a major blow to this new animal abuse industry.

Sadly, meat from these wild animals is still on sale in small chains of pubs and in some restaurants and shops. Please let Viva! know of any outlet selling 'exotic' meat, so we can contact them.

Read our reports, educate yourself and help us expose the cruelty and suffering behind these 'exotic meats'.

Urgent Action!: The UK has just opened its first crocodile farm - yet another animal forced from its natural habit into the horrors of the factory farm. However, the trade is still new enough for us to do something about it. Click here to find out what you can do to help.

Rescued joeys (baby kangaroos) - millions are killed when their mothers are shot for meat. Juliet Gellatley speaks on BBC Radio One and National TV at a Viva! demo against kangaroo meat. Viva! ‘kangaroos’ die in front of a representative of the kangaroo industry and a pro-shooting politican. They flew from Australia to London to watch Viva!’s demos that helped end the UK supermarket trade in kangaroo meat. Viva! demo outside the UK chain "Walkabout" who sell kangaroo and other "exotic" meat. Poster warning about dangers of eating kangaroo meat. Kangaroo Shortly after Viva!'s launch in 1994, our attention was drawn to a new 'product' in Tesco's meat chillers. Nestled on its Styrofoam tray and wrapped in clingfilm, it was simply labelled 'kangaroo steak'. We discovered that this so-called delicacy is the product of the greatest slaughter of land animals in history. Hunted down at night in the vast outback, with powerful four-track vehicles, the startled animals are mesmerised with search lights and shot - supposedly in the head. We obtained video footage of a shooter in action. What was depicted was a cruel and barbaric blood bath. Animals were shot in the throat, their legs slashed open, a hook inserted and they were hauled on to the back of the vehicle, still gasping in agony. Large, still-conscious males were dragged up by their testicles. When females were shot, the first action of the killer was to search their pouches for babies. Having found one, he threw it to the ground and stamped on it, grinding his heel on the 'joey's' head. He walked away, leaving it writhing. Obviosuly, there is no justification for this wildlife massacre and our research revealed the excuses offered by the Australian government were lies. We were determined to stop this cruelty and targeted Tesco - persistently for two years. We printed special materials for their customers and put hundred of local groups outside their stores to distribute it and supplied information to the media. The culmination was a double-page spread in the News of the World on kangaroo killing and Tesco dropped the trade four days later. That was 26 September 1997. In 1998, Viva!'s director Juliet Gellatley visited Australia and created a storm of controversy - doing about 50 media interviews and a press conference at Canberra's Houses of Parliament - filmed live on national and regional TV news. She returned to the UK to reinvigorate the campaign - including, on 24 July 1998, a demonstration outside Sainsbury's supermarket's headquarters in London. Actress, Pam Ferris, cut up her Sainsbury's loyalty card in front of Australian and British radio and TV cameras. It was followed the next day with 100 demonstrations in the UK outside Sainsbury's stores and in Australia at restaurants that sold the meat. Representatives of the killing industry came to the London demo, desperate to protect their markets. It did them no good because Sainsburys also dumped 'roo meat and were followed by all the main supermarkets - 1,500 stores in all. It led to Juliet being presented with the Australian Wildlife Protection Council award for services to wildlife. Despite the victory in Britain, Australia has been increasing its sales of kangaroo meat and leather all around the world and the kill quota for 2001 is a staggering 5.5 million animals. Juliet returned to Australia in 2001 to reinvigorate the campaign and to forge bonds between Australian and European groups in order to widen the campaign to save the kangaroo. We have to hope this will work because failure will inevitably lead to the extinction of these unique and wonderful animals.

Ostriches are the oldest living birds on Earth. They are nomads, designed to roam over vast tracts of grassland and deserts. With their long powerful legs they run up to 40 mph, covering 25 feet in a single stride. They live into their 70's in close-knit families. In Britain and the USA where ostriches are farmed, they do none of these things. They are penned up, their eggs taken away and their chicks killed at one year old. Unable to shed rain from their feathers, here they are at risk from exposure and pneumonia. Slaughter bound birds are often starved for hours or days before they are killed. Moved in all kinds of weather, they endure cold, damp, thirst, heat stress, panic and terror. In cattle transporters, they jump into one another and run into walls screaming. After the stress of transport, the ostrich may be penned up in darkness with a hood over its head. The next day, still hooded, it is taken to the slaughter pen. Its legs are hobbled and the hood is soaked in water. An electric sheep stunner is clamped across its head, it is hoisted up and its throat cut. Another method of stunning is the captive bolt pistol. However, the UK government states that this is unsuitable for ostriches and should not be used. The bird's delicate skull can stop the stunner from working or it may be shot in the wrong part of its head - meaning agony to a conscious bird aware of its life blood draining away Healthy Option? Contrary to claims, ostrich is not low in cholesterol. It has 57mg per 100g - almost the same as beef. Ostrich meat can transmit many diseases to humans including salmonella, E coli and campylobacteriosis, and it decays much more rapidly than other meats, allowing bacteria to flourish. Article on Ostrich farming and Viva!'s Day of Action against Waitrose Waitrose Supermarkets have dropped the sale of ostrich meat from all its stores. Read the full press release here.

Crocodiles are also killed in the wild although taking animals from the wild for captive breeding is more common. The shock and trauma of capture is substantial and that is before they are confined in an unnatural habitat for the rest of their lives. Most worrying, there is still no code of welfare for captive crocodiles anywhere in Australia, where much of the crocodile meat comes from. Crocodiles are the only living dinosaurs, the last remaining members of the Class Archosauria, reptiles of the Mesozoic era. Their ancestors lived around 200-65 million years ago, alongside Tyranosaurus rex and the massive Brontosaurus. They lived through the Cretaceous era when the dinosaurs disappeared, survived the break up of the ancient world when continents split and drifted across the globe and even made it through the Ice Ages of the last 2 million years. Amazingly, today's crocodiles are little different from their prehistoric relatives but in the twentieth century world of greed they face new and very real threats: habitat destruction, legal hunting, poaching and entanglement in fishing nets have all had an effect on the numbers left in the wild. But at least they were in the wild. Now maximising profits has become the global goal, ancient rights are disregarded and the magnificent crocodile has become subjugated to the horrors of the intensive farming system.