Fuel made from animal fat/tallow

[NoTallowFuel]

Hi. I've recently done a massive amount of research into biofuel made from animal fat/tallow and I'm wondering what you feel about tallow fuel as a vegan?

Personally I was so horrified by it that I had to start organising a campaign against it, especially as the UK public have had no consultation about it and it's simply being rolled out into the public domain in buses, transport lorries, power stations, and in a year or so into the pumps.

I have a huge ethical dilemma about it and I'd love to know your opinions please... would you use a bus fuelled by tallow biodiesel? How do feel about the fact your electricity may already be coming as a result of tallow fuel used in the power station? Would you fill your car with it at the pumps?

In the future my fear and expectation is that as demand for biofuel grows farmers will be rearing fat cattle and pigs to go directly into rendering for fuel.

[EllaGuru]

I heard about this a couple of months ago and I was horrified at the thought that it will become so difficult to avoid travelling or heating our homes without contributing to animal abuse. I would like to buy an electric car one day for environmental reasons, but if the electricity used to power it comes from animal fat that won't help me as an ethical vegan. The only way to avoid heating our homes with dead animals is to opt for a completely alternative lifestyle and not use electricity at all which would be extremely difficult for the vast majority of us.

I know next to nothing about this subject, so please excuse my ignorance, but wouldn't more animals need to be farmed to provide the fuel and wouldn't that be as environmentally damaging as farming them for food?

Could you give details of the campaign that you're organising please?

[Pob]

In the future my fear and expectation is that as demand for biofuel grows farmers will be rearing fat cattle and pigs to go directly into rendering for fuel.

That's unlikely as it would be cheaper to grow a vegetable oil crop (eg. rapeseed, sunflower, soya) and hydrogenate it (assuming saturated fat is needed for biofuel) than to feed a massive amount of soya, wheat, etc to animals just to get tallow. Tallow is only cheap because it's a waste product used for cheap soap for instance.

Finding new ways to use waste products is good for the environment, but it's bad because it helps to subsidise animal farming. It's a bit of a tricky one. Is it better to dig up more oil or use more land to grow biofuels, or is it better to use a waste product?

I think it probably falls into the category of if people stopped eating animals it wouldn't be an option. But until they do it would do less harm to the environment and cause less extra animal deaths to use tallow as fuel than it would to use palm oil or grow crops for biofuel.

[Zan]

At the moment the lambs from Scottish hill farms are going direct to rendering plants and will probably land up as bio fuel. This is a sheme that the Scottish Parliament has launched to help the hill farmers who haven't been able to export their lambs as they usually do because of Foot and Mouth Disease---nearly all the lambs from hill farms are "light" lambs who go off on horrendous journeys to Spain, where they want lean meat----- and also to avoid the welfare problem that would develop if the lambs stayed on the hills with the ewes all winter when there is only enough feeding for the ewes.
As far as the lambs are concerned it is a huge improvement on what would have happened to them normally,and I am glad for them that their ends will be less traumatic, but the casual disregard of their lives while seeing them as so much waste product to be utilised disgusts me.

[umbilical]

would you use a bus fuelled by tallow biodiesel?

i would have no other choice, i'm afraid, but i'm only using the bus when there's no other way

How do feel about the fact your electricity may already be coming as a result of tallow fuel used in the power station?

depression

Would you fill your car with it at the pumps?

i don't have a car

[emzy1985]

Personally if they go through with it they are stupid...oh wait they are! This is enviromentally unsound and would just be another cover up to prop up the ailing meat industry.
If it went through, I don't know what I would do. Probably what I'm doing now. Avoiding cruelty as much as humanly possible...probably by cycling everywhere and installing green energy producers (I.E solar panels and mini wind turbines) to use the least animal fuel electricity as possible. (Should really do that anyway...but don't have the money!)

[Mzee]

It's easy to switch your electricity supplier. On the day that Tony Blair announced that he wanted a new generation of nuclear power stations, I switched online to Ecotricity www.ecotricity.co.uk

Using slaughter-house offal and 'surplus' animals as "Bio-fuel" is obscene, but unfortunately it is not a unique case. They are also used as part of the fuel in cement kilns - the calcium from the bones is regarded as a 'bonus' to the energy from the flesh and fat.

We just have to keep publicising cases like this to make more people aware of the real cost of meat-eating.