The Dirty Secret In Your Electricity: Animals

For vegan customers, however, the relative proportion of animal product may be irrelevant. Those who chose not to eat fish, whether for ethical or welfare reasons, would be disgusted to discover that energy providers had used sick fish to produce energy.

TESS RILEY: ‘Most of the electricity in countries like the U.S. and the U.K comes from burning fossil fuels. Renewables such as wind power, as well as nuclear energy, likewise feature in the mix. But energy can also be derived from breaking down animal byproducts, like poultry poop, and even whole animals, into gas that can be burned. In December, the U.K newspaper The Times reported that British energy firm SSE had sold energy generated at Scotland’s Barkip power station using dead farmed salmon unfit for human consumption…

A spokesperson for SSE told HuffPost the company was unable to confirm whether diseased salmon had definitely been used to generate electricity because the Barkip station “just takes waste to save it going to landfill,” but said it would be “fair to assume it took fish carcasses at one point.” The spokesperson said the Barkip station, which is owned by SSE, produces about 0.02 percent of SSE’s generation capacity and any potential processing of dead fish would have stopped a couple of years ago…

For vegan customers, however, the relative proportion of animal product may be irrelevant. Those who chose not to eat fish, whether for ethical or welfare reasons, would be “disgusted” to discover that energy providers had used sick fish to produce energy, Lex Rigby, campaigns manager at animal rights group Viva!, told HuffPost… Dominika Piasecka from The Vegan Society said that, from a vegan perspective, there’s never an argument for using animals. “It’s about respecting them,” she told HuffPost, whereas using them for energy “reinforces the idea that they’re just products for us to use”.’ SOURCE…

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