MARION Langford's article (in The Business, December 4) on Australian cuisine, which concluded with a recipe for Murray Red Kangaroo, was frivolous and misleading.

Thanks to a sustained campaign by animal welfare activists, most UK supermarkets have stopped selling exotic meats such as kangaroo, ostrich and crocodile.

British shoppers are slowly becoming aware of the barbarity which lies behind the sale of kangaroo meat and leather. It has been estimated that more than one million joeys (young kangaroos) are clubbed to death or left to die of starvation after their mothers have been shot by untrained marksmen.

Australia has a fine reputation for producing great sportsmen and sportswomen, highly original artists and quality wines.

Do they really want to sacrifice all this and be known mainly as the perpetrators of the largest massacre of wild land animals the world has ever seen?

ANDREW DAY

Bydemill Gardens

Highworth