Tesco’s meaty power program outrages vegans

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Tesco, the giant British retailer that owns the Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market chain of small grocery stores in Southern California, faces the ire of vegans for a program in Britain that turns unsold meat into electricity.

Britain’s Daily Mail reports that Viva (Vegetarians International Voice for Animals) is protesting a program in which meat that isn’t sold by its sell-by date goes to biomass-to-energy plants. They turn waste food into biofuel, which is used to make electricity.

The Mail says that Tesco sends about 5,000 tons of meat a year to such plants and that it’s used to make enough electricity to power 600 homes. It’s part of efforts by the British to reduce the waste sent to landfills and to create alternative energy sources.

But what’s green to some amounts to waving a red flag in front of a bull to others.

‘It’s a sad indictment of modern life that not only hundreds of millions of animals are killed each year in the UK, but so much meat is left over from greed and indifference. To turn this wasted meat into power might seem like a good idea at first, but you have to ask yourself, why is so much left over and why are so many animals dying to provide this excess?’ Justin Kerswell, a Viva spokesman, told the Mail.

-- Jerry Hirsch