An Australian murderer has failed in his attempt to overturn a prison ban on Vegemite, arguing that being denied the iconic spread violated his human right to participate in Australian culture.
Andre McKechnie, who is serving a life sentence for murder, brought his case over the yeast extract to Victoria’s Supreme Court last year.
Court documents show that he claimed the refusal breached rights protected under the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act, including the right to “enjoy his culture as an Australian in the community with other persons of Australian background”.
Justice Claire Harris agreed that the decision to withhold Vegemite from the 55-year-old prisoner amounted to a “limitation” of his cultural rights under the Charter.
However, she ruled that the restriction was justified because it supported the prison system’s efforts to prevent illicit drugs and alcohol from entering its facilities.
“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 her 47-page judgment.
Prison officials told a trial in July that Vegemite had been prohibited across Victoria’s 12 prisons for about two decades. They said the spread could interfere with sniffer dogs’ ability to identify narcotics and that its yeast content could potentially be used to make alcohol.
McKechnie represented himself during the proceedings via video link from Barwon Prison, a maximum-security facility west of Melbourne. He argued that New South Wales prisons’ decision not to ban Vegemite showed that “less restrictive means reasonably available” could achieve the same drug and alcohol prevention goals.
An Australian judge has rejected a prisoner’s human rights challenge against a ban on Vegemite
Vegemite, the salty, sticky black-brown spread produced as a by-product of brewing beer, was invented in Melbourne in 1922 as an alternative to Marmite.
Although its strong flavour is famously divisive, many Australians regard Vegemite as a national culinary symbol. More than 80 per cent of Australian households are estimated to keep a jar in their pantry.
For many people, however, Vegemite remains a taste that must be acquired.
McKechnie initially told the court that going without Vegemite had contributed to a thiamine deficiency.
He said Vegemite and pork were sources of thiamine, or vitamin B1. As a Jewish man who follows kosher law, McKechnie said he could not eat pork and therefore took daily vitamin supplements.
Vegemite has traditionally been promoted as a source of B vitamins, including thiamine (B1), riboflavin (B2), niacin (B3) and folate (B9), which are often presented as beneficial additions to children’s diets.
He later abandoned the thiamine argument as “not important” after lawyers representing prison authorities challenged his evidence.
McKechnie also said that being unable to eat Vegemite left him feeling “deprived of being able to practice my Australian culture, sad and disconnected from my family and community”.
Harris rejected that reasoning, writing 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”.
In support of his claim, McKechnie referred to a 2003 article in the food studies journal Gastronomica, which stated that “Vegemite may be the best predictor of national identity of any food in the world”.
The article drew on 1995 research by Queensland University, which found that a preference for the spread was strongly linked to early exposure, Australian birth and Australian ancestry.
McKechnie also referred to the Australian Olympic Committee overturning a Chinese import ban on Vegemite ahead of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.
He cited Australian band Men at Work’s 1980s international hit Down Under that mentions a ‘Vegemite sandwich’.
On the effectiveness of smearing contraband with Vegemite, McKechnie cited a Melbourne newspaper article from 2017 that reported a man’s unsuccessful attempt to use the odour of the spread to conceal illicit drugs that he attempted to smuggle into a music festival in Victoria. The attempt was thwarted by police sniffer dogs.
The judge upheld prison authorities’ argument that McKechnie had failed to provide any proper foundations for his opinion that Vegemite does not interfere with drug sniffer dogs.
McKechnie also argued that Vegemite contained ‘no live yeast’ and that any piece of fruit would be more useful in making alcohol than the spread.
A state prison department manager, Kevin White, cited publicly available research that said Vegemite helped home-brewed beer ferment more quickly.
Vegemite’s owner, Bega Group, did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.