I'm really not sure what to make of this. It seems logical not to waste old meat, it should be done, but there is something creepy about it.

Source

Row over plan to use unsold meat for power

A supermarket plans to use out-of-date meat to power thousands of homes

A supermarket plan to use out-of-date meat to help power thousands of homes was described as 'macabre' by animal rights activists yesterday.

Non-meat eaters would be horrified to know that their electricity was being produced by the method - known as anaerobic digestion - according to Vegetarians International Voice for Animals.

The group spoke out after supermarkets and power company United Utilities showed off the renewable energy system, which the group said could cut greenhouse gas emission by keeping organic waste out of landfill sites.

Any environmental benefits of recycling the meat rather than sending it to landfill were far outweighed by the greenhouse gases produced by rearing more meat than was needed in the first place, Viva said.

Anaerobic digestion uses micro-organisms to break down waste and generate a biogas which can then be used as an energy source for heat, power and transport. The process has been used in the water industry for decades.

Sainsbury's, which started using anaerobic digestion for its food waste last year, said it could generate enough energy to power a town of 20,000 people and reduce the amount of food waste it sends to landfill by 56,000 tonnes a year.

Retailers generate about 1.6 million tonnes of food waste each year, including meat, with food manufacturers throwing away 4.1 million tonnes and restaurants and other outlets another 3 million.

It's meat. It's already dead. You can't be cruel to something that's already dead.

And it's not going to encourage the mass slaughter of more animals. The only way to get efficient energy out of any agricultural product — especially something as expensive to produce as meat — is to use waste byproduct like this.

Animal rights groups waste their time on perfectly reasonable animal usage like this when they should be focusing on real cruelty issues. It distracts from genuine, solvable problems and undermines their legitimacy.

Personally, I'm going to be first in line once vat-grown meat becomes commercially viable. These clowns should be doing all they can to promote the research and marketing of such technology.

why on't the retailer in question use the meat to power their own stores, thus cutting their costs and enabling them to sell their stuff for less... would, ideally, mean that us customers can save money on our shopping. :D

That is pretty awesome.

Goes to show you that when perfectly reasonable technology is presented, that animal/environmentalist activist groups can't really see the forest from the trees (pun intended).

Sounds like a very reasonable plan. It's too bad that in this day and age that environmentalism has totally separated itself from conservation and efficiency.

This is no different than throwing spoiled meat out; in both cases it gets decomposed, except now something useful can be taken from it. I don't see what the problem is, as long as animals aren't slaughtered exclusively to generate power.

Please stop conflating environmentalists with animal rights activists. There should be a relationship there, but there really isn't. The most vocal animal rights activists don't even understand the concept of ecology.

I was actually thinking about the similarity of this with the activists in America that hate nuclear power, despite the fact it's one of the most environmentally-friendly power sources available. My point is that many of these activists will oppose something not based on logic, but merely on passion.

While it is more friendly, it does have the very very small chance of ending catastrophicly(sp?).

Jagged -

There's a yes and no answer to that.

The best answer to qualms about Nuclear power is given by Stewart Brand - a former anti-nuclear activist and very popular 'green' author. He is about as environmentally-friendly as one can get, but he is now a proponent of nuclear power as a way to be green while meeting challenging economic factors.

You can watch his fantastic 1hr presentation on the green movement and nuclear power here:
http://fora.tv/2009/10/09/Stewart_Brand_Rethinking_Green#fullprogram