As part of the recycling process allowed in the UK, a small amount of plastic packaging from waste food goes into animal feed

Last modified on Monday, December 17, 2018 at 09.30 EST

Experts told the Guardian that plastic traces in animal feed may pose a threat to human health and urgently need to be the subject of more research.

Their comments were made after British farmer Andrew Locke contacted the Guardian, and he noticed that his animal feed contained plastic fragments. The supplier told Locke that this is a legal part of the recycling process that converts still-packaged food waste into animal feed.

Locke runs a small pig farm in Lincolnshire and has found tiny plastic fragments in his pig feed for months. "In my mind, I thought maybe people threw gloves into the feed mill. I took out a kilogram spoon from the bag, and it took me a few weeks to make this. I put it in the light and I almost Plastic was found in every spoonful."

He contacted the supplier who sold him the feed and was surprised to find that the debris was not a mistake, but a legal part of the recycling process that converts the still-packaged food waste into animal feed.

There are more than 650,000 tons of unused food in the UK every year, from bread to martian sticks, which are saved from landfills through conversion into animal feed. Systems that strip plastic packaging cannot capture all plastic, so in the UK, the Food Standards Agency allows 0.15% of plastic to be used. The EU officially allows zero plastic content in animal feed, but in fact many other countries are within the same 0.15% limit.

In response to his question about whether even these restrictions are safe for consumption, the supplier told him that the product was within the legal limits and came from a third-party factory approved by Ufas (Universal Feed Assurance Program).

Ufas is a voluntary program operated by the Federation of Agricultural Industries. They confirmed to the Guardian that they would review Mr. Locke’s complaint, but stated that their findings would be protected by a strict confidentiality agreement.

But Locke said that the fact that this was legal shocked him. "I think the only people who are not shocked by this are the people involved in the manufacture of animal feed. Their casual acceptance makes me uneasy."

Dr. Heather Leslie told the Guardian that “the only plastic content in animal feed should be completely absent”. Leslie is an ecotoxicologist specializing in microplastics at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. "The feeding of animals that the citizens eat lacks transparency. The citizens have no way of knowing what they actually eat.

"During feed processing, larger fragments may release tiny microplastics. We believe that smaller fragments pose a greater risk to animal health. For decades, we have known that small plastic particles can be ingested after ingestion. It passes through the intestinal barrier of mammals and enters the blood. It has been tested in pigs, dogs, mice, and chickens. They can be transported from the blood to tissues and organs. We know this from research on mice. ."

"I certainly hope for more research," said Dr. Stephanie Wright, a researcher at King's College London that studies the effects of microplastics on human health. She pointed out that even for small parts, there is a risk of leaching chemicals from the plastic. "The micro-level chemicals that make up the plastic network are [used to] provide flexibility or flame retardancy. They are easy to fall off and are easily leached. This is why the use of BPA (a chemical in food packaging) is prohibited in baby bottles. Substance) because it will seep into the milk from the plastic.

However, she warned that the chemical burden of the surrounding environment on humans and animals is so great that it is difficult to know whether plastics in animal feed play a key role. She said: "We currently produce about 8 billion tons of plastic. By 2050, there will be 25 billion tons on the planet. The production of human chemicals is rising."

Paul Featherstone, former chairman of the British Food Processors Association and director of the animal feed producer SugaRich Group, told the Guardian that every effort has been made in the process to keep plastic traces to an absolute minimum, and pointed out that the problem of preventing food waste from entering the landfill The field is a huge environmental problem.

"Like most EU countries, we have a weight tolerance of 0.15% for plastic residues. We did not set it as a target. We hope to be far below this target. We don't want to add anything harmful to animals in our feed. s things.

"This practice has existed for a long time, because farmers living next to the biscuit factory will take away the garbage. But now it has been formalized, and since the idea of ​​circular economy developed, it has indeed had a lot of Progress. This is part of the Sustainable Development Goals. We have to study how to safely send these wastes into the feed chain. The risks brought about are offset by the benefits of 3.5 million tons of food being put back into use throughout Europe, which is a logical And after the benefits of risk assessment, we should all think this is a good idea."

Globally, about one-third of food for human consumption is lost or wasted from farm to table. Ultimately, the food that is lost or wasted consumes a quarter of the total agricultural water use, requires a land area as large as China, and is estimated to account for 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The FSA told the Guardian: "Based on current information, including the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) assessment of the safety of microplastics in food, the FSA believes that the reported levels of microplastics particles are unlikely to occur in certain types of food. Will cause harm to consumers."

This article was corrected on December 15, 2018. The previous version said that by 2015 there will be 25 billion tons of plastic on the earth; this should be said to be 2050.