Australian prisoner loses challenge to Vegemite ban

An Australian prisoner serving a life sentence for murder has lost a court challenge to a ban on Vegemite in Victoria’s prisons, after arguing that the rule denied him the right to enjoy his culture as an Australian.

Justice Claire Harris ruled Monday that the ban limited Andre McKechnie’s cultural rights but was justified by prison authorities’ efforts to keep illicit drugs and alcohol out of the prison system. “The limitation on Mr. McKechnie’s ability to enjoy Vegemite in community with other persons of Australian background is primarily that he is a prisoner,” Harris wrote in a 47-page judgment, according to NPR.

McKechnie brought his case under Victoria’s Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act. He told the court that being unable to eat the salty yeast-based spread left him feeling “deprived of being able to practice my Australian culture, sad and disconnected from my family and community,” NPR reported.

Harris wrote that “it is difficult to accept that the inability to consume Vegemite, rather than the fact of his imprisonment, is a material cause of his sadness and disconnection from his family and community.”

Victoria has barred Vegemite from its prisons since 2006, according to the BBC. Prison officials testified that its strong smell could interfere with sniffer dogs detecting drugs and that it could be used to brew alcohol. Kevin White, a state prison department manager, cited publicly available research suggesting Vegemite could speed up fermentation in home-brewed beer, NPR reported.

McKechnie disputed both concerns. He argued that Vegemite contains “no live yeast” and that fruit would be more useful for making alcohol, according to NPR. He also cited a 2017 newspaper report in which police dogs detected drugs despite an attempt to mask their smell with Vegemite. Harris found that he had not provided a proper foundation for his view that the spread does not interfere with drug-detection dogs.

McKechnie pointed to neighboring New South Wales, where prisons do not ban Vegemite, as evidence that Victoria had less restrictive ways to pursue its security goals, NPR reported. The BBC reported that the spread is also banned in prisons in Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania.

The BBC reported that McKechnie also argued the ban breached a requirement to provide prisoners with food that supports their health and well-being. The judge found that claim had not been proven. McKechnie initially linked his lack of access to Vegemite to a thiamine, or vitamin B1, deficiency, saying he could not eat pork because he observed kosher law and took daily vitamin doses. He later dropped the thiamine issue as “not important,” NPR reported.

According to the BBC, McKechnie was sentenced to life for stabbing a property developer to death in Queensland in the 1990s and was later transferred to Victoria. NPR reported that he represented himself by video link from maximum-security Barwon Prison during a July hearing.

First sold in Australia in 1923, Vegemite was invented in Melbourne as an alternative to Britain’s Marmite, the BBC reported. McKechnie cited a food studies article describing it as a powerful marker of Australian national identity. That cultural significance, the court found, did not override the prison’s restrictions.