Consumers should be informed if any of their home electricity is being generated using the 'macabre' recycling of waste meat from supermarkets, campaigners said today.

Tesco now sends 5,000 tonnes of meat that has passed its sell-by date to be turned into enough National Grid electricity to power 600 homes for a year.

The retail giant has hailed the scheme as part of a 'green' drive which had enabled it to stop sending any of the waste it produces to environmentally damaging landfill sites.

But animal rights campaign group Viva said many non-meat eaters would be 'horrified' that their houses were being part-powered by out-of-date meat.

And they said any environmental benefits of recycling the meat were far outweighed by the greenhouse gases produced by rearing so much more meat than was needed in the first place.

Justin Kerswell, campaigns manager for Viva (Vegetarians International Voice for Animals), said: 'It's a sad indictment of modern life that not only hundreds of millions of animals are killed each year in the UK, but so much meat is left over from greed and indifference.

'To turn this wasted meat into power might seem like a good idea at first, but you have to ask yourself why is so much left over and why are so many animals dying to provide this excess?

'Surely killing fewer animals in the first place should be the aim.

'Whatever savings are made by turning this meat into energy is more than voided by the huge amount of greenhouse gases generated by the farming and production of the meat in the first place. Tesco should take a long hard look at its wasteful practices.'

He said consumers should be told if their domestic power came from such sources.

'More and more people are choosing to adopt an ethical and green vegetarian or vegan diet.

'Most would be horrified to find out that their power was generated by left-over meat. Consumers should have the right to know if their power is generated in this macabre manner.'

Government-funded waste body Wrap (Waste and Resources Action Programme) says retailers generate about 1.6 million tonnes of food waste each year, including meat, with food manufacturers throwing away 4.1 million tonnes and restaurant and other outlets another three million.

Britain lags behind other European countries in the use of so-called 'anaerobic digestion' conversion, and ministers were handed recommendations on how to boost rates by an expert review panel last month.

Meat and other food waste is processed in biomass-to-energy plants which turn waste food into bio-fuel and then use that to produce renewable electricity.

Tesco, the UK's biggest retailer, said this week that it had succeeded in diverting all of its annual 531,000 tonnes of waste away from landfill.

Schemes such as the meat-to-power conversion, recycling cardboard boxes into new ones and turning recycled carrier bags into rubbish sacks had all been used as part of the drive, it said.

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1204525/Vegetarians-outrage-Tesco-admits-macabre-practice-turning-date-meat-electricity.html


I know the story is from the Daily 'hate' Mail but it's interesting none the less. How do you feel at the prospect of your home being partly powered from the corpses of tortured animals?