Lift feed ban to lower food prices?

Grain prices have risen 83% in 3 years. The ban on feeding animal by-products to livestock began in 1996 after the BSE crisis in Britain which was linked to animal feed. According to Professor Wall, it is now safe to lift the ban.

The European Commission is considering a plan to allow pigs to be fed poultry trimmings and chickens to be given pig meat to save farmers from buying expensive grain and have asked for Wall’s advice.

“Soya meal and other grain prices are going through the roof. Is it morally and ethically correct to be destroying this food when people are starving? No one I know is worried about the science. There is only concern about consumer reaction,” he said.

A spokesman for Defra said that it was awaiting formal advice from the European Food Standards Agency.

“We would only support the proposal if we were satisfied that there was no risk to human health and that appropriate and effective testing had taken place to control the use of such proteins in pig and poultry feed,” it said.