SUNDAY roast chicken. Pork chops and apple sauce. Beef and mushroom pie.

Australians love their meat. But what if there were more options on the supermarket shelf than just chicken, beef, lamb, veal and pork?

Imagine a world where restaurants served cane toads, camel steaks and sea urchins on the menu. One Australian professor is pushing for just that.

Professor Philip Hayward from Southern Cross University believes that the future of Australian sustainability lies in our ability to harvest introduced pests that ravage natural ecosystems and prey on native species.

Prof Hayward is a marine specialist who has been urging Australians to start eating sea urchins farmed on Tasmania’s east coast.

The long-spined urchins are considered a pest, migrating from the east coast currents and stripping the ecosystem of its resources, leaving no food for the native purple urchins to feed on.

Prof Hayward believes the urchin overpopulation issue should be seen as an opportunity for international trade.

“One approach is, instead of worrying about them, why don’t we see them as a resource?” he told news.com.au.

Sea urchins, known as ‘uni’, are a culinary delicacy and therefore a valuable commodity in Japan and China. “Fresh, high-quality ones get premium prices,” Prof Hayward said.

Since the sea urchin trade took off, chefs in Tasmania have been experimenting with the uni in their dishes, and people are slowly starting to try it.

But sea urchins aren’t the only item on Hayward’s menu of the future. He also believes we should be eating cane toads and camels.

“It makes sense to farm other animals that are culled because they are pests,” Hayward said. Camels and cane toads are both introduced species that have overrun native environments.

But the issue is not whether these pests can be farmed. It lies in whether Australians will eat them.

Dr Gary Mortimer, a Queensland University of Technology who specialises in consumer behaviour in food retail, believes there is a long way to go for Australians to fully embrace the concept of eating uni, camel or cane toad.

“Cane toads have been long held as an introduced pest, but there are issues around poison that they carry. For consumers, it’s a bit like eating snake,” Dr Mortimer said. “Researchers are trying to get consumers to shift past what the animal is and to see it as protein.”

Dr Mortimer also highlighted the increasing popularity of camel and kangaroo meat in retail stores.

“Most Australian consumers are starting to shift away from that standard of meat and three veg,” he told news.com.au. “People are becoming more adventurous, and shows like MasterChef,which feature a range of more exotic ingredients, are a part of that mind shift.”

A Coles spokesperson confirmed that camel burgers had been stocked since May 2013 in 200 stores across NSW, Victoria and Queensland.

Prof Hayward agreed that Australians were still very particular about what mammals, birds and fish they ate. “They show an inflexibility which is determined by a particular cultural heritage,” he said.

So has Prof Hayward taken his own advice?

“I’ve eaten sea urchins in Tasmania, Chile and Japan, but I have yet to try cane toad,” he said.

Would you eat camel, cane toad or sea urchins? Tell us by commenting below or join the conversation on Twitter @newscomauHQ | @gracekoelma