Support amongst UK pig farmers and agricultural stakeholders for the use of food losses in animal feed.

While food losses (foods which were intended for human consumption, but which ultimately are not directly eaten by people) have been included in animal feed for millennia, the practice is all but banned in the European Union. Amid recent calls to promote a circular economy, we conducted a survey of pig farmers (n = 82) and other agricultural stakeholders (n = 81) at a UK agricultural trade fair on their attitudes toward the use of food losses in pig feed, and the potential relegalisation of swill (the use of cooked food losses as feed). While most respondents found the use of feeds containing animal by-products or with the potential for intra-species recycling (i.e. pigs eating pork products) to be less acceptable than feeds without, we found strong support (>75%) for the relegalisation of swill among both pig farmers and other stakeholders. We fit multi-hierarchical Bayesian models to understand people's position on the relegalisation of swill, finding that respondents who were concerned about disease control and the perception of the pork industry supported relegalisation less, while people who were concerned with farm financial performance and efficiency or who thought that swill would benefit the environment and reduce trade-deficits, were more supportive. Our results provide a baseline estimate of support amongst the large-scale pig industry for the relegalisation of swill, and suggest that proponents for its relegalisation must address concerns about disease control and the consumer acceptance of swill-fed pork

Environmental and health impacts of using food waste as animal feed: a comparative analysis of food waste management options.

The disposal of food waste is a large environmental problem. In the United Kingdom (UK), approximately 15 million tonnes of food are wasted each year, mostly disposed of in landfill, via composting, or anaerobic digestion (AD). European Union (EU) guidelines state that food waste should preferentially be used as animal feed though for most food waste this practice is currently illegal, because of disease control concerns. Interest in the potential diversion of food waste for animal feed is however growing, with a number of East Asian states offering working examples of safe food waste recycling - based on tight regulation and rendering food waste safe through heat treatment. This study investigates the potential benefits of diverting food waste for pig feed in the UK. A hybrid, consequential life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted to compare the environmental and health impacts of four technologies for food waste processing: two technologies of South Korean style-animal feed production (as a wet pig feed and a dry pig feed) were compared with two widespread UK disposal technologies: AD and composting. Results of 14 mid-point impact categories show that the processing of food waste as a wet pig feed and a dry pig feed have the best and second-best scores, respectively, for 13/14 and 12/14 environmental and health impacts. The low impact of food waste feed stems in large part from its substitution of conventional feed, the production of which has substantial environmental and health impacts. While the re-legalisation of the use of food waste as pig feed could offer environmental and public health benefits, this will require support from policy makers, the public, and the pig industry, as well as investment in separated food waste collection which currently occurs in only a minority of regions.E.K.H.J.zE was funded by BBSRC grant BB/J014540/1. R.S. was funded by the Islamic Development Bank and Cambridge Overseas Trust.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Elsevier via https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.05.04

Beyond recycling: an LCA-based decision-support tool to accelerate Scotland's transition to a circular economy

Resources and waste strategies have recently seen a shift in focus from weight-based recycling targets to impact-driven policies. To support this transition, numerous decision-support tools were developed to help identify waste streams with the highest impacts. However, the majority of these tools focus solely on greenhouse gas emissions and show a narrow picture of the overall environmental impacts. Furthermore, they cover burdens associated with direct waste management activities and hence fall short when it comes to highlighting the substantial benefits that can be achieved by preventing waste in the first place. This paper quantitatively demonstrates the necessity to adopt impact-based targets that go beyond estimating the greenhouse gas emissions of waste and highlights the substantial benefits of waste reduction and prevention. Using a state-of-the-art waste environmental footprint tool, the paper quantifies the overall environmental impacts of Scotland's household waste and shows how targeting ‘heavy’ materials does not necessarily have the highest overall environmental benefit. Results show that embodied environmental impacts of household waste dominate the total environmental burdens, contributing more than 90% to the whole life cycle impacts, and hence policymakers should prioritise interventions that aim at waste reduction and prevention. Moreover, our analysis shows that food and textile wastes are high-priority materials in Scotland, with the largest contribution to overall environmental burdens; up to 42% and 30%, respectively. Considering the overall environmental impacts of specific waste materials will enable policymakers to develop more granular and targeted interventions to accelerate our transition to a sustainable circular economy

The UK waste input-output table: Linking waste generation to the UK economy.

In order to achieve a circular economy, there must be a greater understanding of the links between economic activity and waste generation. This study introduces the first version of the UK waste input-output table that could be used to quantify both direct and indirect waste arisings across the supply chain. The proposed waste input-output table features 21 industrial sectors and 34 waste types and is for the 2010 time-period. Using the waste input-output table, the study results quantitatively confirm that sectors with a long supply chain (i.e. manufacturing and services sectors) have higher indirect waste generation rates compared with industrial primary sectors (e.g. mining and quarrying) and sectors with a shorter supply chain (e.g. construction). Results also reveal that the construction, mining and quarrying sectors have the highest waste generation rates, 742 and 694 tonne per £1m of final demand, respectively. Owing to the aggregated format of the first version of the waste input-output, the model does not address the relationship between waste generation and recycling activities. Therefore, an updated version of the waste input-output table is expected be developed considering this issue. Consequently, the expanded model would lead to a better understanding of waste and resource flows in the supply chain.The work of the first author is supported by the IDB Cambridge International Scholarship.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from SAGE Publications via 10.1177/0734242X1665854

Support amongst UK pig farmers and agricultural stakeholders for the use of food losses in animal feed.

While food losses (foods which were intended for human consumption, but which ultimately are not directly eaten by people) have been included in animal feed for millennia, the practice is all but banned in the European Union. Amid recent calls to promote a circular economy, we conducted a survey of pig farmers (n = 82) and other agricultural stakeholders (n = 81) at a UK agricultural trade fair on their attitudes toward the use of food losses in pig feed, and the potential relegalisation of swill (the use of cooked food losses as feed). While most respondents found the use of feeds containing animal by-products or with the potential for intra-species recycling (i.e. pigs eating pork products) to be less acceptable than feeds without, we found strong support (>75%) for the relegalisation of swill among both pig farmers and other stakeholders. We fit multi-hierarchical Bayesian models to understand people's position on the relegalisation of swill, finding that respondents who were concerned about disease control and the perception of the pork industry supported relegalisation less, while people who were concerned with farm financial performance and efficiency or who thought that swill would benefit the environment and reduce trade-deficits, were more supportive. Our results provide a baseline estimate of support amongst the large-scale pig industry for the relegalisation of swill, and suggest that proponents for its relegalisation must address concerns about disease control and the consumer acceptance of swill-fed pork

Data and [R] code associated with the publication: "Support amongst UK pig farmers and agricultural stakeholders for the use of food losses in animal feed"

Data and code used used to generate all results and plots in the manuscript: zu Ermgassen et al., "Support amongst UK pig farmers and agricultural stakeholders for the use of food losses in animal feed". The file "swill_tidy.R" contains the code, and the survey data are stored in "swill_survey_data.csv"

Research data supporting “A holistic approach to the environmental evaluation of food waste prevention”

The microeconomic rebound effect consists of a direct and indirect effect: the direct effect is related to the additional demand for the product that has been subject to an efficiency improvement (i.e. additional demand for some categories of food, where the efficiency improvement is an increase in the ratio between the food purchased and consumed), whereas the indirect effect refers to the additional demand in all other consumption categories. Tables attached below includes multipliers that could be used to determine the rebound effect associated with UK household savings in the UK. Data provided below is presented in two formats: Exiobase and COICOP. The readership is advised to refer to the paper for more details about the methodology utilised to generate these multipliers.BBSRC [BB/J014540/1

A pragmatic and industry-oriented framework for data quality assessment of environmental footprint tools

Environmental footprinting, underpinned by systematic life-cycle thinking, is increasingly seen as a critical concept for designing policies to fight climate change. The holistic nature of a life-cycle approach, built using the principles of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), enables policy makers to understand the potential impacts and benefits of policy options. Although LCA is a widely used and well-established method, methodological aspects such as the quality of background data, model uncertainty, and comparison against existing literature are not usually communicated effectively to wider audiences, in particular policy makers. This paper introduces a novel hybrid data quality assessment method in the context of a case study based on the Scottish Waste Environmental Footprint Tool, a newly developed environmental life-cycle thinking tool. It offers an accessible method to present results of the data quality assessment of environmental models to policy makers and helps identify areas of improvements in future upgrades

Estimates from the six models with the greatest weighting (summing to 100% of model weight) of how the acceptability of different feedstuffs varies according to their characteristics (e.g. whether or not they contain animal by-products, or their legality).

<p>The variation between different feeds, respondents, and feed:job combinations is shown below the dashed line. Model weights are proportional to the size of the points. Error bars are 89% credible intervals.</p

Comparison of swill and conventional feed.

<p>Responses to the question: “Compared with feeding conventional grain- and soybean-based feed, heat-treated swill is:”.</p