An extra 16.5 million people in the UK - and two billion people globally - could be fed every year, if we stopped feeding grain to factory farmed animals, according to a new report released today (16 October) by Compassion in World Farming.

In the UK, this equates to the land area of about Cambridgeshire and Norfolk combined, and globally, land almost the size of Mexico, that could be freed up to grow food for people instead of animals.

Released on World Food Day, the report – Food not Feed: How to stop the world’s biggest form of food waste – reveals the hidden scandal of our global food system. It shows that in many countries factory farming wastes more food than the amount wasted by households and businesses.

It explains that feeding human-edible grain to animals to produce meat or dairy is an inefficient way to produce food – for example, for every 100 calories of human-edible grain fed to animals, just 3-25 calories of meat are produced.

If we reduced this waste by switching to regenerative farming, with animals fed on products humans cannot eat – such as pasture, by-products and properly treated unavoidable food waste/scraps – global food security would be vastly improved, the report explains.

The global animal welfare and environmental NGO is now asking their supporters to sign an open letter to the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer – backed by celebrities including Dragons’ Den investor and businesswoman, Deborah Meaden and TV doctor, Dr Amir Khan – urging them to adopt policies that prioritise the production of food for people over animal feed.

Insights from calculations in the report show that:

A staggering 8.3M tonnes of grain is wasted annually in the UK by being fed to animals in factory farms
Over half of UK grain is used as animal feed (52.8%)
0.8 million hectares – about the size of Cambridgeshire and Norfolk combined, could be freed up to grow fruit, vegetables, legumes and pulses for human consumption.

Globally, the figures are further colossal:

766 million tonnes of grain is wasted by being fed to animals in factory farms – more food than is wasted by households (631m tonnes), food service (290m tonnes) or retail (131m tonnes)
While 59 million tonnes of food are thrown away in the EU every year, almost 125 million tonnes of grain are wasted by being fed to animals – enough to feed an extra 247 million people per year
Even more is wasted in the US, where 66 million tonnes of food are thrown away while 160 million tonnes of grain are wasted as animal feed – enough to feed almost 288 million extra people.

Worryingly, it also shows that around double the grain currently used will need to be produced to feed factory farmed animals by 2040 if we continue with business as usual.

Thousands of hectares of land are cleared to grow crops for feeding farmed animals, with deforestation impacting communities and killing nature. Furthermore, industrial agriculture’s huge demand for grain as animal feed has led to an expansion of monocultures, and the use of chemical pesticides and synthetic nitrogen fertilisers has led to soil degradation [1], [2] biodiversity loss, [3] overuse and pollution of water [4], and air pollution [5]. 

Anthony Field, Head of Compassion in World Farming UK, said:

This research reveals the scandalous reality that our current UK food system is so utterly inefficient. Factory farming is wasting 8.3M tonnes of food annually, yet simultaneously we see thousands of people going hungry and a dramatic increase in demand for food banks. As well as being the world’s biggest form of animal cruelty, fuelling climate change and killing nature, factory farming wastes food on a colossal scale.

The numbers reveal the huge challenge ahead. If the Government is serious about improving UK food security, they need to take steps to help farmers move aways form wasteful grain-based factory farming, adopting fair policies that prioritise food over feed.

Human-edible crops should be fed directly to people instead of to animals used to produce meat or dairy. This change could feed an extra 16.5 million people in the UK every year. It’s vital the Government considers this new research when shaping its new Food Strategy reforms.

Alongside the report, Compassion has released a powerful interactive tool to raise awareness of this issue which shows the amount of food wasted across the globe through factory farming in selected key countries including the UK.

The report’s release follows a petition hand-in this week of almost 315,000 UK citizens calling on the Government to end factory farming. The petition formed part of Compassion’s global initiative that gained over a million signatories worldwide.

~ends~

View our open letter to the Prime Minister .

For more information please contact: Compassion in World Farming at media.team@ciwf.org or call +44 (0)1483 521 615.

 References 

Edmondson et al, 2014. Urban cultivation in allotments maintains soil qualities adversely affected by conventional agriculture. Journal of Applied Ecology 2014, 51, 880–889. 
Tsiafouli et al., 2015. Intensive agriculture reduces soil biodiversity across Europe. Global Change Biology: 21, p973–985. 
World Health Organization and Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity. 2015. Connecting global priorities: biodiversity and human health. 
Mekonnen M and Hoekstra A, 2012. A global assessment of the water footprint of farm animal products. Ecosystems.: DOI: 10.1007/s10021-011-9517-8. 
Lelieveld et al, 2015. The contribution of outdoor air pollution sources to premature mortality on a global scale. Nature, Vol 525.

World’s biggest cause of food waste revealed on World Food Day