Let pigs eat swill and stop wasting precious resources

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/23/food-waste-recycling-pigs-farming

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What do New Zealand, South Korea, China, Japan and a good chunk of the United States have in common? They all convert leftover waste food into delicious meat, via the pig. In the UK, we used to recycle our food waste in the same way: pigs and humans have lived in perfect harmony for more than 5,000 years precisely because pigs are such good converters of waste. It was only after the outbreak of foot and mouth in 2001 that a temporary ban was imposed on the swill industry, a ban that then spread across Europe and suddenly had a distinctly permanent feel to it.

Many thought the ban justified; foot and mouth saw the slaughter of millions of livestock and countless farmers were driven out of business. Some scientists supported the theory that the outbreak of the disease was due to a negligent farmer failing to "cook" his swill properly, but there remains doubt as to whether foot and mouth actually came from his farm.

He was breaking all the rules, but the UK serotype of foot and mouth bore an uncanny resemblance to the South African serotype that had been running rampant and we know that rules were being broken on the importing of contaminated meat. Unfortunately, the investigations were inadequate and the consequence was that scores of farmers who had invested in machinery to treat their swill safely were put out of business.

The crucial point here is that the cooking of swill is essential to its use; failure to do so is dangerous. Robust systems to heat-treat food waste effectively have been established in many countries. But in the UK, we have the dangerous situation where food waste is being dumped in landfill up and down the country, creating a potentially huge health hazard from the possible spread of disease from gulls, rodents and other vermin that feast on it.

The ban is also having a negative impact on the business of rearing pigs. Prevented from feeding swill to their pigs, farmers are now left to buy soy, maize and wheat on the global market. As food prices soar, so does the cost of their feed. Unfortunately for the planet, the majority of this feed is grown halfway across the world in places as precious as the Amazon basin and the Cerrado grasslands. Thus the pressure to destroy ecosystems is exponentially increased while in the UK we throw out about 15m tonnes of waste a year.

Meanwhile, we are worrying about how to grow enough food for the world's population and simultaneously using almost 40% of the grain we grow to feed animals instead of humans. If we diverted all the food waste that is being ditched to be treated and fed to animals, we would save enough grain to feed about 3 billion people.

This is the argument of The Pig Idea. Stop wasting food; instead, fund research into regulated processing plants. In this way, we can safely cook food waste and convert it into nutritious animal feed. Not only would we be lowering the cost of feed for pig farmers, but we would also be saving the planet's precious resources.

<em>Restaurateur Thomasina Miers co-founded The Pig Idea, a campaign to lift the ban on feeding food waste to pigs</em>

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