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Is your electricity generated from meat?

Green & Black | 05.08.2009 16:52 | Animal Liberation | Energy Crisis | Cambridge

Tesco has admitted that it sells 5,000 tonnes of meat for the national grid to turn into electricity.

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rights campaign group Viva said many non-meat eaters would be 'horrified' that their houses were being part-powered by out-of-date meat.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

Green & Black


Comments

Hide the following 11 comments

Just goes to show,,

05.08.2009 17:57

you can flog a dead horse.

Trigger


so what

05.08.2009 19:40

most people wouldn't or shouldn't care if their electricity is in part produced by burning waste meat as most aren't vegetarian. vegans can always use non tallow candles

twee


to twee

05.08.2009 19:44

Unless that waste meat was from dead humans. Those naturally passed away, killed in war and died of starvation, then it'd probably make people upset. If that started to happen I'll remember your hypocrisy over the issue when it first became a problem.

veg@n


This is important

05.08.2009 19:57

This is the national grid - so all of the lecy is tainted.

It is the clear duty of every true vegan to unplug everything.

Sit in the dark.
Do not use computers
Cook only with gas.

Any other choice is hypocrisy.

and no true vegan is ever a hypocrite.

Vegan in the Dark


Twee

05.08.2009 20:15

Since when did something not affecting most count for anything? The point is that energy companies are not informing customers of the truth on how their energy is generated or they're outright lying on the source of the power, I think most vegetarians, vegans, and animal lovers would be horrified by the prospect that their electricity usage is helping to fund animal exploitation by encouraging farmers and slaughter houses to overproduce because they can always rely on selling the wastage for energy generation.

Raising livestock is a massive contributor to greenhouse emissions and it's been explained many times on indymedia why bio-mass burning is just a big con. There are no reductions in CO2 emissions, and it's definitely not green like the companies are trying to say. I am fully aware that there are many who are not vegetarian/vegan, however this is another direction from which to attack Tesco's and the energy companies.

People should know about the cons they are using to trick consumers into thinking that they're somehow even remotely green, there is nothing green about incinerating waste materials and animal carcases. It's ludicrous for Tesco and the National grid to even claim this given the massive amounts of carbon emissions involved in a) raising the livestock b) transporting the livestock to slaughterhouses c) packing the meat the associated impact of that d) transporting it around the country to a shop e) then shipping it to a power station and then f) burning it.

Thus my opposition is twofold, one the animal rights/liberation issues. I want to know exactly how my energy is generated, I want no part in aiding the exploitation of animals. And two it's nothing more than green wash, these companies are outright lying and tricking the consumers into thinking that they're doing their bit for the environment.

Even highlighting relatively smaller issues such as this goes some way in opening the eyes of the public.

Green & Black


Choose your arguments...

05.08.2009 20:42

i'd rather their out-of-date meat went to generate electricity than landfill.

i'd rather they weren't selling meat in the first place - in fact i'd rather supermarkets didn't exist at all - but i certainly won't be going around moaning about one of the few positive elements of their fuckedup exploitative and unresilient food production system. Choose your arguments; i won't be using this one.

but then again, i also value the life of a human being more than that of any other animal (and i freely admit that), which probably makes me worthless scum according to some of the posters on here

Barndance


we are part of a species

05.08.2009 22:03

>> Unless that waste meat was from dead humans. Those naturally passed away, killed in war and died of starvation, then it'd probably make people upset. If that started to happen I'll remember your hypocrisy over the issue when it first became a problem.

Well, its not - so its a bit of a mute point. But, to clarify - most people value humans above animals so it couldn't be hypocrisy for these people.

Last time i checked humans are omnivores and have been hunting, farming and killing animals for 1000s of years. It is part of our evolution tracing back to the time of the great apes and beyond. The only primates on the list with pure diets were the very small species (which are entirely insectivorous) and the largest (which specialize in vegetarian diet). However, the spectrum of dietary preferences reflect the daily food intake needs of each body size and the relative availability of food resources in a tropical forest. Our closest relatives among the apes are the chimpanzees (i.e., anatomically, behaviorally, genetically, and evolutionarily), who frequently kill and eat other mammals.

justine


vegan in the dark

06.08.2009 02:01

Yes you are. My lecky is solar.

anon


Giv e the meat to people in need..

06.08.2009 09:38

Why are they burning it? Why not give it to homeless charities or poor people? Such a waste. Those animals died just so that Tesco could over-stock it's shelves. Something has to be done about our over-consumption.

Daily worker


and dead lab animals too...

06.08.2009 15:36

Stericyle UK (formerly White Rose Environmental) collect the remains of countless animals tortured to death in UK labs and breeders nationwide, including Harlan, Covance and the majority of university vivisection depts. They then transport the 'clinical waste' to their Leeds incinerators where it is burnt, turned into electricity and pumped into the national grid.

A Stericyle-WRE subsidiary also made millions doing a similar thing with farm animals during the foot and mouth outbreaks a number of years ago.

Ever wondered what happens to those millions of bins at factory farms full of dead chickens and piglets who have died as a result of this industrialised farming, or when you pass the abattoir and there are crates full of animal heads, offal etc and anything they cannot sell, or even behind your local butchers when meat goes past its sell-by date. The PDM Group (based near Pontefract, but with other branches) is the answer. They collect them in massive white lorries (similar to those used for transporting rock salt, but full of corpses and reeking) and take them to their incinerators, where everything is burnt and turned into electricity for the national grid.

Extremely sick if you ask me.

Skivens


friends up north.

08.08.2009 11:31

Glad to see you out of prison and posting on indy ;)

anon


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