OUR major trading pals the Chinese are about to celebrate the Year of the Tiger, but one Queensland businessman would like to see a Year of the Cane Toad introduced soon.
None of this has anything to do with the once- celebrated pro golfing Tiger who morphed into a “cheetah”. Nor is it about trying to get the Chinese to back our NRL team famous for eating Cockroaches for dinner.
But it could help rid the scourge of warty immigrants from South America, now hopping their way as far south as Melbourne and west into the Northern Territory, destroying native fauna along the way.
The toads were introduced to Queensland in 1935 as biological warfare against the sugar cane beetle but the plan soon came unstuck in a big way. The beetles lived near the top of the tall cane and the warty foreigners couldn’t jump that high, so they just started eating almost anything else that moved and crawled, including many native birds, frogs, reptiles and small mammals.
Uh-oh, bad idea. What makes it worse, the poisonous toads have no predators other than humans behind the wheel of trucks, wielding golf clubs or plastic bags destined for the freezer.
As a kid growing up in North Queensland, I and thousands of others did our bit by dispensing air rifle slugs between the eyes - but guns are now banned and devotees of political correctness would frown on that the same way they do if anyone adopts a nine iron as the weapon of choice.
It’s not just the small reptiles or birds the toads devour, any larger animal attempting to eat one soon finds the deadly poisonous cane toad was their last supper.
Anyway, if you were stranded on a desert island, a cane toad would probably be the last thing you would want to eat, but not, apparently, if you were Chinese. Just like their Japanese neighbours who can’t resist poisonous toadfish, the Chinese reportedly like to nibble on cane toads and a Queensland entrepreneur wants to satisfy their appetites.
Meat processor John Burey hopes to negotiate a deal to start exporting cane toads for human consumption. He told the ABC recently the toad’s poison was highly prized in Chinese medicine and the meat was also eaten.
“We really have to nail down the export requirements that China’s going to place upon us - and also what we have to do within Australia,” he said. “If we start handling cane toads, you’re talking about a venom that’s considered a class one drug in Australia - so there’s licensing that has to be there.”
Mr Burey said if the deal eventuated it could be a solution to Queensland’s biggest pest problem. He likened collecting toads to collecting aluminium cans as a fund-raiser.
“But instead of sausage sizzles and charity drives, pie drives that sort of stuff - they could do a toad drive.”
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