If kangaroos were culled to full existing national quotas and all used for human consumption, roo would still only make up four per cent of the national red meat market.

That’s the estimate of the industry’s pioneering "go to" man, Ray Borda, the first person to legally sell a portion of edible roo meat to an Australian supermarket, a quarter of a century ago.

This year Mr Borda expects NSW and Queensland to fill between 60 and 70 per cent of their quotas and South and Western Australia to do about 50pc.

There are 48 species in Australia and only five are culled.

Mr Borda, founder and owner of Macro Meats, now the single supplier of kangaroo meat to 3000 Woolworths, Coles and IGA supermarkets around the country, loves to put his product where his mouth is, but he is also realistic.

"Of course I eat sheep and beef too, and for most people that’s not going to change."

Mr Borda is working to lock in kangaroo as a top-end niche product, for its flavour, quality, tenderness, low fat content, shelf life and environmental "correctness" for lack of methane emissions.

"I hope it can become the crayfish of the meat world, and eventually its value will be reflected and it will earn its real price, even with some logical factors working against this at the moment," he said.

The idea of shifting to see kangaroos as livestock hinges on markets and economics and has been around for a long time, says NSW DPI pastures and rangelands research leader, Dr Ron Hacker.

"If farmers could make the same or better money from kangaroos as they can from livestock, they’d change but so far the money’s has not been there," Dr Hacker said.

"There has to be a capacity for land holders to get something out of it, not just the harvesters and processors, so the markets you can get the product into will determine the balance."

Currently harvesters rely on farmers’ goodwill alone for access.

A recent study suggested that an increase in the commercial kangaroo population to 175 million with a 30 per cent reduction in total cattle and sheep populations by 2020 would lower Australia’s annual greenhouse gas emissions by three percent, or 16 megatons.

The study was published in the new international on-line journal, Conservation Letters, a journal of the Society for Conservation Biology, published by Wiley-Blackwell with Dr George Wilson of Australian Wildlife Services as the lead author.

Immediately came a counter call by the Australian Society for Kangaroos and associated bodies for a moratorium on culling, suggesting some species were close to extinction, attributable to "unsustainable industry ... coupled with years of drought".

NSW DPI and commercial industry experts say if populations did fall to dramatically low levels, harvesters would suspend operations, which would become uneconomic because of a lack of return on costs.

Booming to a good future 

Willingness to eat kangaroo comes down partly to what you’re used to.

In Australia, the age group between five and 20 are the biggest consumers - they have fewer preconceptions, having seen it on the shelves as they’ve grown up, says one of the commercial industry’s most experienced players, Ray Borda.

"The exciting part is they’re the next generation of consumers, the future is good," he said.

The future continues to look good too in Europe, which takes 70 per cent of meat produced in Australia for human consumption.

Where the Coat of Arms pulled far fewer heartstrings at the huge and agenda setting Anuga food fair in Cologne, Germany, Mr Borda’s company stand cooked roo samples for 60,000 people and drew acknowledgment from Meat and Livestock Australia’s exhibition nearby.

Whether "we wore out three barbecue cookers" meant more than running out of gas repeatedly, Mr Borda said "all the people who tried it were amazed".