Advertisement
UK markets closed
  • FTSE 100

    7,952.62
    +20.64 (+0.26%)
     
  • FTSE 250

    19,884.73
    +74.07 (+0.37%)
     
  • AIM

    743.26
    +1.15 (+0.15%)
     
  • GBP/EUR

    1.1701
    +0.0008 (+0.06%)
     
  • GBP/USD

    1.2624
    +0.0001 (+0.01%)
     
  • Bitcoin GBP

    56,017.29
    +683.07 (+1.23%)
     
  • CMC Crypto 200

    885.54
    0.00 (0.00%)
     
  • S&P 500

    5,254.35
    +5.86 (+0.11%)
     
  • DOW

    39,807.37
    +47.29 (+0.12%)
     
  • CRUDE OIL

    83.11
    -0.06 (-0.07%)
     
  • GOLD FUTURES

    2,254.80
    +16.40 (+0.73%)
     
  • NIKKEI 225

    40,350.78
    +182.71 (+0.45%)
     
  • HANG SENG

    16,541.42
    +148.58 (+0.91%)
     
  • DAX

    18,492.49
    +15.40 (+0.08%)
     
  • CAC 40

    8,205.81
    +1.00 (+0.01%)
     

How pigs could save Britain millions

With food prices rocketing and landfill overflowing, could pigs help Britain save some cash?

Britain is broke. Okay, so we’re finally seeing some growth in the economy but that’s making very little difference for most people. Wages are stagnant, while prices are high and rising - especially food prices and especially the price of meat.

The campaigners behind Pig Idea think they can help. For thousands of years, pigs have been used to recycle food waste. Humans have fed leftovers to pigs and then used the pigs to create more food. It was neat, it worked and it meant there was very little waste.

But EU rules now prevent British farmers and even hobbyists from feeding their pigs leftovers.

The problem of wasted food

Food waste is a ridiculously expensive problem here in the UK. A report earlier this year from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers suggested that as much as half of the world’s food is thrown away.

Some of that is from our homes – the Love Food, Hate Waste campaign estimates that 50% of the food thrown away in this country comes from our homes, costing the average household £480 a year.

As individuals, we can take steps to stop that, which save us money directly. However, that still leaves more than 7.2 million tonnes of food and drink being chucked out elsewhere.

Restaurants, schools, hospitals, prisons… All are scraping food into landfill that could be fed to pigs. But EU regulations don’t allow food waste to be fed to animals, even though pigs have been fed this way for millennia.

That leaves businesses paying to have food waste disposed of, when there could still be demand for it.

“Operating both a restaurant and pig farm we understand not only the high costs of commercial grain faced by farmers, but equally the cost of having our own catering waste collected in turn,” said Tim Finney, a pig farmer and restaurateur. “The Pig Idea is common sense for everyone. This is what pigs are designed for, and why we first started to keep them.”

There were good reasons behind the ban, which was imposed on 2001 following the foot and mouth crisis.

There were concerns that pigs were being fed swill contaminated with pork products, leading to dangerous outbreaks of disease. However, the Pig Idea campaigners say they don’t want indiscriminate ‘pig swill’ bins, but rather for suitable food such as bread, dairy, fruit and vegetables to be diverted from landfill, treated and passed to pig farmers.

So how would feeding this waste to pigs instead help Britain save money?

[How to waste less food at home]



The sums



The clearest way this would cut the cost of bacon is by reducing costs for the farmers. Since the nationwide ban on feeding livestock kitchen and catering waste came into place, farmers have been importing crops like soya beans, wheat and maize. All of those crops could be fed to humans, so the price is high.

Campaigners estimate that a project to raise eight pigs on food waste at a London farm will divert 5.5 tonnes of food waste per month for pig feed. That means the city farm will save approximately £325 over the course of six months.

That’s a potential saving of £40.60 per pig in half a year. When you consider that roughly 9 million pigs are reared to slaughter in the UK every single year, and that approximately 90% of food waste sent to landfill is suitable for livestock, the potential savings are dizzying.

However, it would also reduce food businesses’ costs by providing a cheaper way to dispose of leftovers. It would dramatically cut the country’s reliance on landfill and help the UK towards its target of becoming a “zero waste economy”.

That policy states: “We want to move towards a ‘zero waste economy’. This doesn’t mean that no waste exists - it’s a society where resources are fully valued, financially and environmentally. It means we reduce, reuse and recycle all we can, and throw things away only as a last resort.”

Yet millions of tonnes of pig-suitable food are being chucked out, while millions of tonnes of human-suitable food is being imported and fed to pigs. This makes no sense economically, environmentally or ethically.


Ethical economics

Like many money-saving tactics, feeding kitchen waste to pigs would also help reduce the environmental impact of food production and even help counter world hunger.

The UN estimates that enough human-quality food is fed to livestock to feed three billion people. At a time when European pig farmers are going out of business because of rising grain prices, perhaps the Pig Idea campaigners are right to call that crazy.

What do you think? Would feeding pigs swill instead of soya make a difference? Are rising meat prices hitting your pocket? Have your say in the comments below.