Is this a better solution for polymer notes?

happyinflorida

I had no idea that the bank of england, owned by the corrupt, vile, evil Rothschild family were being this disgusting and vile - the fact they've used animal products in any paper note is disgraceful but to then offer to make them with palm oil is just as bad.

I am so angry - if they go ahead with this I will refuse to accept these notes and will not use them - I will demand coins instead and insist on giving everyone coins and tell them why.

The bloody rothschilds need putting in jail for the world havoc they cause.

palm oil is ruining so many people's lives in countries where all the forest has been cut down - which affects climate and means people and animals haven't got shade and animals lose their homes too and people. What is wrong with these awful companies that have got so big and don't care about anyone or anything and are totally unethical?

I wish people would boycott all the non tax paying companies too, like Amazon, Boots, Vodaphone, Topshop etc

Vote labour as Corbyn is decent and honest and will close the tax loop holes so the UK has enough money to pay for a proper NHS, schools, free university education, etc - they are the only party who will stop privatisation of the NHS which has to happen as we are being ripped off and losing the good services.

DigForVictory

I'm not desperately shocked, but saddened that the BofE didn't do it's homework on us before sorting the notes. Nation of animal lovers - so of course include dead animal.

In minuscule quantities, yes, but the principle of the thing & the *predictability* of someone getting up & saying this is wrong? Shame on the BofE.

Other countries haven't had any problems - well, they may not have the freedom of the press or the general backbone, or just possibly their religious & dietary extremists have elected to keep calm & carry on, but now the BofE has let the genie out of the bottle, it needs to finish what it has started with all grace it can muster.

So, no tallow, no palm oil & bonus points for recycled vegetable oil? On you boffins get. This time, liaising & with a view to phasing out the new notes in favour of the acceptable new notes, eh?

DiscountofMonteCristo

Clifford_Pope wrote: »

Also of course the man who works the printing press probably loves his meat, so the vegan argument falls down anyway.

Can you explain this argument? What is the 'vegan argument' and how does it fall down on account of the dietary choice of whoever works a printing press?

DiscountofMonteCristo

peter_the_piper wrote: »

The existing £5 plastic note and the new £10 note due for release in September, will continue to contain traces of animal fat.
The Bank concluded that it would be too expensive and would threaten the supply of bank notes to get rid of them despite the protest.

I don't see why it can't just create a new £5 note, immediately phase that in, and at the same time phase the tallowy one out.

DiscountofMonteCristo

chrischarles wrote: »

I read some analysis that showed how the trace amounts of animal fat in the polymer notes would mean that every £5 note in existence could be sourced from the fat from a single cow (and it is basically a waste product in the cow so mostly goes to waste anyway).

If this is so the amount of palm oil required instead would be equivalently low - so it should not be difficult at all to find it from a sustainable source. So we don't need to worry about orangutans and rainforests.

DiscountofMonteCristo

0nyirt0dd wrote: »

Animal by-products are used for lots of things in manufacturing.Have these people who object to Tallow being used in the new bank notes never handled a candle? What do they think candles are made of? Yes it is Tallow, and there is no outcry about them.

Vegans and vegetarians who object to animal fat in public products like currency are extremely likely to know about its presence in various commercial products like candles, soap, make-up and unlikely to use any.

zeupater

tain wrote: »

This.

It's a ridiculously small amount of tallow being used. So small, it could come from an animal that died of natural causes.

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/a-very-precise-calculation-of-exactly-how-many-cows-are-being-murdered-for-the-new-fivers

Anyone with a problem simply wants to have a problem. No real substance to any argument.

Hi

So we have all of this fuss over half-a-cow's worth of tallow .... I just wonder whether the scale of this morality based stance and argument is being extolled by anyone who lives in a property with windows, especially clean windows, which result in the loss of over 33 million birds every year ... that's ~1500 tonnes, the equivalent of about 2000 cows, or in individual accountability terms, around 4 birds killed every 3 years by every UK household just as a result of having clean windows .....

.... moan about tallow, fine, but be ashamed of having murderous windows ....

So, what about cars & cats ? ... around 250,000 cats are estimated to be killed on the road each year, that's ~1000 tonnes, the equivalent of about 1300 cows, or in individual accountability terms, roughly 1 vehicle in every 100 kills a loveable furry little pet every year just as a result of a transport mode choice ....

.... moan about tallow, fine, but be ashamed of having murderous cars ....

I can understand those taking a position on goods containing tallow on strict religious grounds which would also forbid any contact with anything which involved an animal by-product in either the product itself, or the manufacturing process (eq leather or tallow based soap or anything washed in a tallow based soap, or anything made by a machine lubricated by a tallow based lubricant, or ....), but totally fail to follow the pure 'morality' or 'ethical' argument as raised by so many on this issue so I'd agree with tain's viewpoint referenced above ....

Whilst people continue to eat meat and/or wear animal skin products there'll be a demand for the countryside to be populated by the livestock which most of us like to see .... remove the demand and on purely economic grounds the bulk of existing livestock effectively becomes landfill or fertilizer .... not too much morality or ethics involved in wishing for or promoting that outcome then!

Z

Ben84

I'm a vegan, and I would like money in the future to be made without animal products. I don't personally see any advantage to throwing out the existing notes though. The cow's aren't coming back now, it wouldn't do any good.

Talking about how much animal fat is in the notes doesn't potentially answer the question how much animal fat is used. Things are often made with materials that aren't left behind in the finished product. These 'traces' might be the contamination from a production step, not an important part of the notes themselves. The bank of england aren't really in a good position to share too much about how they make money, so this is a special case where it's hard to know for sure.

However, talking about the scale of other animal product uses is interesting, but it's not the point. Some people do see animals as individuals, not simply things to count up and decide how many are ok to kill. Society's large scale killing and consumption of animals remains is the thing we dislike, not a good reason for us to start doing it too. Fortunately avoiding items containing or using them is reasonably practical to do. Money however is pretty much impossible to avoid.

I don't connect at all with the waste product idea either, I just have no desire to make the best use of animal products to make it more efficient. Making the most use of an animal's remains is generally presented as a way for people to feel better about killing them. Let the slaughterhouses throw out the lard. Buying it doesn't save animals, it's just another way to support and grow the industry that's killing them. The more we buy the more they die.

I feel more positively about using palm oil than animal fat. Many animals are fed palm oil and soybeans - and consume a lot of these for the materials finally produced when they're slaughtered. Animal products are not free of palm oil and soy's environmental issues, in fact they're worse than just using the palm oil and soy directly. Besides, I'm not that convinced palm oil is any worse than any other oil. The scale of palm oil's effects is big because we use so much of it. If we swapped our massive use of palm oil to use the same amount of another oil, would the result be any better? I doubt it. We really need to find ways to use less oil in total, or to make it more sustainable to produce. Algae oil is the most interesting alternative I know about.

Edit to add something: I don't agree with the suggestion people's strongly held religious views are more understandable than vegans' views. Why should anyone's opinions be worth less because they haven't attached them to a deity? I think religious views matter - but crucially, I think they matter equally.

zeupater

Hi Ben

Interesting points, but in effect there's a question of whether it's environmentally or ethically preferable to intentionally become more inefficient & 'throw out the lard' when this inevitably leads to allocation of further global resource (palm oil etc) to replace what has been wasted? ... seems illogical to me, but I enjoy eating meat, wearing leather & woollen clothing and living in a well maintained & balanced countryside .... furthermore, the vegan society themselves seem to maintain a balancing position on such things through stating '... to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable ... ' which tends to accept that as others (the majority) may chose to take an opposing view, it may be totally impracticable to completely exclude & avoid contact with animal product, whether intentional or not, which seems to be the case with the £5 notes containing tallow, simply because they already exist.

I'd rather lean on the fence at the bottom of my garden watching sheep, goats, horses, ponies, donkeys & cattle happily living their lives in the field behind than have the seemingly unchanging blandness of crops such as rapeseed or linseed, however, this wouldn't be possible if we all made the same life choices as strict vegans because all of the aforementioned animals wouldn't be there, they'd be dead or never born due to lack of usefulness/demand ...

Don't worry, I'm not anti-vegan or anything like that (just as long as no-one attempts to convert me from my carnivorous ways)... for me, it's a countryside thing combined with an appreciation of scale, context, technical solutions and that we are where we are .... after-all, there's nothing preventing anyone with objections to handling £5 notes using other methods of payment, such as contactless cards etc, just as long as there's ample confidence that they don't contain tallow by-products either ...

Z

Ben84

Hi Zeupater,

I wasn't thinking you're anti-vegan. Actually, my post was largely about the whole thread so far.

Yes, I agree with the idea that veganism is about excluding animal products as much as practical, and that comes with consequences. For me, if the bank of england keep making money with animal fat in, well I'm just going to have to use it. However, saying there's nothing stopping people from just using alternatives is not something I feel entirely ok with. There can be this "just get on with it and stop making problems" attitude towards vegans. However, on the other side of this, there can be a "why do people keep sticking dead animals in everything" attitude. Yeah, I've felt that sometimes. It's not really helpful though to be in either of those places. Some kind of agreement is needed. Hopefully it resolves in a way that most people are happy with in the end. I imagine the bank of england changing the way they make future notes will be the end of it all.

My let them throw out the lard statement sounds drastic, but the context is that animal farming is awful for the animals and awful for the environment. Anything that encourages it is not something I feel happy doing. I would like to see a future with less use of animal products, not one that is making the best of a bad situation indefinitely. If we buy less today, there won't be so much in the future, so it would pay off in the end.