Agriculture: Animal Feed

Baroness Jenkin of Kennington Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Baroness Jenkin of Kennington]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the environmental and economic impact of feeding food waste to livestock.

[Baroness Jenkin of Kennington]

My Lords, I should like to start by thanking noble Lords for joining me in this debate. There are many competing events this evening and I am most grateful to your Lordships for your interest in this subject.

Nine thousand years ago, humans domesticated pigs and chickens in order to recycle waste back into food. This eliminated the problem of waste disposal and increased the total amount of food available. More recently, feeding food waste to livestock has been mired in difficulties, particularly after the outbreaks of foot and mouth disease and classical swine fever, both of which were traced to badly managed swill-feeding systems, causing billions of pounds worth of damage to the UK economy and huge distress to farmers and citizens here and abroad. In 2001, the UK Government and the EU banned the feeding of catering and domestic food waste to livestock. Coming on top of the previous controls on feeding animal by-products to livestock that followed the BSE scandal, this put an end to an age-old practice.

Those measures may have been justified in the short term but there is now a compelling case for reassessment. At a time when increasing demand for food is putting a strain on natural resources and food security, and contributing to a global food system that leaves 1 billion people malnourished, we have an obligation to produce our food in the most efficient ways available to us. Needless to say, the top priority is to reduce the amount of food wasted in the first place, but the second best option is to use unwanted food to feed livestock.

It was obviously always a bad idea to feed animal by-products to herbivorous ruminants such as cows and sheep, but pigs and chickens are monogastric species like ourselves and are naturally omnivorous, thriving on the leftovers of our own food supply system. Sterilising food waste simply by heating it has been shown to be a guaranteed way of killing pathogens such as foot and mouth and classical swine fever, rendering it a safe source of livestock feed. There is peer-reviewed evidence that feeding food waste, including processed animal protein, to pigs has measurable benefits for their health and well-being, and there is an absence of evidence that feeding PAP and/or catering waste to pigs and chickens under appropriate rigorous controls creates an undue risk. Defra officials confirm that at the time of introducing the ban the British Government did not undertake research into the environmental or economic impacts of banning the feeding of food waste to livestock. This was an extraordinary omission, and we welcome the fact that Defra has now commissioned FERA to look into this issue.

The Governments of other countries such as Japan, South Korea and China and many states in the USA take the view that this is the best way of turning food waste into a valuable resource. Instead of banning the practice, the Japanese Government assist pig farmers who wish to convert to use feed derived from food waste. Supermarkets, manufacturers and catering establishments divert their food waste for this purpose, and the resulting pork is sold at a premium as eco-pork on the same supermarket shelves from which the waste originated.

This process must obviously be conducted strictly in accordance with robust controls to prevent the outbreak of animal diseases. Collecting food waste in centralised processing plants, many of which have been established in Asia, ensures that the heat-treatment process can be electronically monitored to ensure that all food waste is properly sterilised. This gets over the fear that individual rogue farmers will bypass the heat-treatment stage, as is believed to have occurred with the outbreak of foot and mouth in 2001. Japanese farmers are thereby able to save up to 50 per cent of their feed costs, putting them at a competitive advantage over British and European producers, who must purchase commercial feedstuffs on an increasingly volatile and unaffordable world market. The vulnerability from livestock feed imports is reflected in the fluctuation in the price of soy, which has increased by almost 200 per cent in 10 years.

British pig farmers are an endangered breed. Thousands have gone out of business in recent years and more are expected to lose their farms in the future. One of the main reasons for this has been the price of wheat, maize and soy—the principal ingredients of pig and chicken food—on the global marketplace. This is largely because farmers are competing with the growing global livestock industry, as well as with people who buy these grains for their own consumption. By relying on these commodities for pig and chicken feed, the British farming sector is dependent on foreign imports. While I would like to expand on this aspect, time does not permit, and I expect it to be addressed later in the debate. Resuming the practice of recycling food waste for livestock feed would therefore be a way of increasing Britain’s food security for the future.

Anaerobic digestion is rightly promoted as an alternative to landfill that can convert food waste into energy and digestate that can be used as fertiliser. However, where food waste is fit for animal consumption, research published by Tristram Stuart in his book Waste indicates that feeding it to livestock can save up to 500 times more carbon dioxide emissions than are saved by sending food waste for anaerobic digestion. Producing pork from food waste is also several times more profitable, economically speaking.

Some types of unwanted food—namely, bread, dairy, fruit and vegetable waste—can still be legally fed to livestock as long as it has not come into contact with meat. Whereas waste producers pay in the region of £80 per tonne to dispose of food waste in anaerobic digestion, if the food waste can be separated from animal products it can be sold to farmers for roughly £20 per tonne. I understand that one food manufacturer which introduced this system recently has saved in the region of £100,000 per year.

The Food and Drink Federation has successfully promoted the diversion of food co-products and by-products for animal feed, announcing in 2008 that its members had diverted to livestock feed over half a million tonnes of food that would otherwise have been wasted. Research shows that in the UK and across Europe millions more tonnes could be salvaged in this way. Defra is now working with some supermarket chains and local authorities to ensure that more legally permissible foodstuffs can be used in this way. Sainsbury’s confirmed last week that it now collects all its bread waste from stores across Britain and diverts this for animal feed. That is much to be welcomed. Wholesale markets such as the New Covent Garden Market in London also have their unwanted fruit and vegetables collected for pig feed. Further encouragements to food companies, local authorities and farmers themselves are needed to ensure that this is replicated across the whole retail sector and beyond.

One significant advantage of this is that there is currently insufficient anaerobic digestion capacity in this country, and new plants are expensive and take time to commission. By contrast, there already exists abundant capacity for diverting food waste to livestock feed; namely, Britain’s cash-strapped livestock farmers. To aid this process, it would be helpful to have clearer data on the quantities of different types of food that are currently wasted in Britain’s food supply chain. Supermarkets do not currently make these data publicly available, and that hinders the ability of businesses and Governments to invest in the infrastructure required to divert unwanted food for livestock feed.

Under the current legal framework, it is clearly essential that foodstuffs being diverted for animal feed should be kept absolutely separate from banned animal products. The NFU and the National Pig Association rightly raise concerns that retail outlets and manufacturers would need to be able to guarantee that any food being sent for livestock feed should never have come into contact with meat or other banned food products. Retailers sell bread, fruit and vegetables to consumers every day and guarantee that these have not been contaminated by contact with meat. They are presumably capable of operating systems that can guarantee this for food going for livestock feed with the same degree of rigour.

We should consider a three-pronged action programme. First, the Government, local authorities and the food industry should work together to promote the diversion of legally permissible foodstuffs such as bread, dairy, fruit and vegetables for livestock feed. This does not require any changes to existing regulations; it merely requires a rigorously practised safe method of separation and distribution. Secondly, there should be further much-needed research into the environmental and economic benefits of lifting the ban on feeding catering waste to livestock. Lifting the ban would require agreement from the majority of EU member states and the EC. This process will take time, but it should begin now. In a world of finite resources, maintaining the ban is not a sustainable option. Thirdly, the Government should support the proposed revision to existing animal by-products legislation to allow non-ruminant PAP from pigs and chickens to be used for pig and chicken feed.

I do not underestimate consumer concern but I do believe that the British public are able to understand that pigs and chickens are naturally omnivorous and that there is a pressing environmental and economic case for reintroducing the recycling of unwanted foodstuffs back into food in this traditional fashion. I very much welcome the Government’s interest in this issue and encourage a wholesale review of processes that could be used to enhance the environmental and economic performance of the British livestock sector.