Over the last two days, environmental groups, MEPs and UN representatives have been taking part in the International Conference on Global Europe, hosted by the European Parliament in Brussels. The title of this year’s conference was ‘Living Beyond its Resources: Impacts of ‘Global Europe’ on Sustainable Development’.

As I tuned in to the live web stream during the session titled ‘Global Europe - Fuelling Europe: A Trade-off between Energy Security and Sustainability?’, I was pleased to hear a representative from the World Society for the Protection of Animals point out that we need to not only look at our levels of consumption but also the type of goods we consume. She gave the example that it takes 10,000 litres of water to produce 1 litre of milk and 10kg of grain to produce 1kg of meat.

Unfortunately, the panel mostly ignored this point. Most of the discussion centred around biofuels. Paul Hodson, Deputy Head of Unit, DG Transport and Energy for the European Commission, pointed out that when crops like wheat and maize are used to make biofuels, the part of the plant that cannot be used to make fuel can be used as animal feed. He used this as an arguement to support biofuels, claiming that this increase in animal feeds, as a by-product of the biofuels industry, would help the EU to reduce its dependency on imported soy - which is hugely damaging to the environment and uses much more land than other crops to produce the same amount of feed.

A British biofuels company, Ensus, explain on their website, that the ‘co-product’ of biofuels has ‘high level of protein, coupled with an amino acid profile that is well suited to the nutritional needs of a variety of animals’.

Why is the priority here feeding animals rather than the 840 million starving people in the world? I am sure many starving families in the world would be very grateful to receive some high protein food. I find this very disturbing.