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Eureka’s Lost Coast Brewery & Café has abandoned plans to serve a “100% wild and 100% kangaroo burger” after learning that doing so in California is 100% illegal.

The local restaurant and brewery, which was recently put on the market, advertised a “Kangaroo Jack” burger (“grilled to perfection” and served with “Australian bush tomato chutney”) in the North Coast Journal‘s annual “Burger Week” promotion this week. 

Unfortunately for local gourmands hoping to taste the bounding marsupial, California outlawed the trade of kangaroo meat and skins in 1971. And while Australian officials and trade groups have sought to overturn that ban (which also prohibits trade in polar bears, tigers, sea otters, dolphins and other species), animal welfare groups have managed to keep it intact (minus a few brief periods when the kangaroo moratorium was temporarily lifted).

We reached Barbara Groom, Lost Coast Brewery’s owner and cofounder, by phone this afternoon and told her we were surprised by her restaurant’s offering.

“Yeah, me too!” she said with a chuckle.

Groom said she wasn’t involved in the menu decision, and as far as she understood the situation, a salesperson from the wholesale food distribution company Sysco suggested kangaroo after her general manager expressed a desire for “something different” for Burger Week. The restaurant has served buffalo, elk and other uncommon meat options in previous years. 

When we said we were pretty sure kangaroo meat was illegal, Groom laughed heartily. “That would be news, if we’re breaking the law,” she said, adding that she’d check in with her general manager and get back to us. She did so about an hour later, saying that her GM spoke with someone from Sysco, who “decided they made a mistake.”

Wayne Pacelle, president of the political and policy group Animal Wellness Action as well as the nonprofit Center for a Humane Economy, based in Washington, D.C., said California’s ban on the sale of kangaroo meat and skins dates back to the broader conservation push around the time of the federal Endangered Species Act. 

The law has faced repeated legal challenges, especially from Australian commercial interests tied to a large-scale kangaroo shooting industry and from companies using kangaroo skins in products like soccer shoes.

“Adidas was very involved and actually challenged the law that went all the way to the California Supreme Court,” Pacelle told the Outpost in a phone interview. Beginning around 2015, he said, a coalition led by his own organizations worked to fend off efforts to “punch a hole in the law.” By about 2016 they had “buttoned it up” legislatively, and a more recent attempt by San Diego-based state senator Brian Jones to reopen the trade was “quickly quashed,” leaving the ban as settled law in California.

However, only the Golden State bans the sale of kangaroo skins and meat. 

“We did introduce the Kangaroo Protection Act in the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate to forbid any trade in kangaroo parts, but that legislation has not yet moved,” Pacelle said.

When told that a local restaurant planned to serve a kangaroo burger with meat provided through Sysco, Pacelle said, “We’re alarmed, and we will be contacting Sysco immediately.”

Dr. Jim Keen, the organizations’ director of veterinary science, said the main problem with kangaroo meat is the lack of proper safety protocols after the animals are slaughtered in the isolated Australian outback. Their bodies are often placed alongside the carcasses of other species in crowded trailers with “questionable cooling,” where they might remain for days before delivery to a slaughtering plant, Keen said. 

Testing and experience have shown problems with Salmonella and spoilage bacteria (including fecal coliforms), leading major former importers such as Russia and China to ban kangaroo meat, Keen said. 

U.S. authorities including the FDA and USDA do not oversee this slaughter the way they do for domestic livestock, instead relying on Australian food safety agencies, which Pacelle and Keen describe as conflicted because they also promote kangaroo meat and skins.

“They don’t have the U.S. safety standards that we all rely upon here,” Pacelle said.

We reached out to Sysco via the company’s website. A couple of hours later, a spokesperson emailed the following statement:

Sysco takes compliance with applicable laws and regulations seriously. The kangaroo meat product in question was purchased from an independent third-party seller through Sysco Marketplace, an online platform that enables customers to access products offered and fulfilled by third-party sellers. 

Sysco did not source, stock, handle, or deliver the product to the customer. The third-party seller supplied and shipped the product directly to the customer.

After becoming aware of this matter, we promptly removed the availability of kangaroo meat products to Sysco Marketplace customers in California.

Burger Week officially kicks off tomorrow. Having yanked the “Kangaroo Jack” as its official entry, Lost Coast Brewery and Café will instead be serving a burger featuring a patty of elk, Wagyu beef and boar. 

Some patrons will be disappointed. Groom said several people told her staff they couldn’t wait to try the kangaroo burger. Personally, though, she wasn’t interested.

“I wouldn’t want one,” she said. “I don’t eat the cute little kangaroos.”