Dale Vince vows to lobby Labour to lift ban on vegan-only school meals

A major Labour donor tonight vowed to lobby ministers to scrap laws banning vegan-only school meals.

Dale Vince, the multi-millionaire founder of green energy firm Ecotricity, said he would urge the new Government to rewrite rules on what pupils are served at lunch.

The 63-year-old, who has donated £3.6million to Labour already this year, outlined his bid to create school dinners from grass 'powder or granules'.

He also vowed to continue his efforts to get the Government to encourage farmers to transition away from animal farming towards crop farming.

Vince said he would try to speak to ministers about schemes proposed in other European countries, including a meat tax or a cap on the number of cows.

As well as founding Ecotricity, the businessman owns Forest Green Rovers - known as the world's first vegan football club - and has ventured into school catering.

His financial backing of Labour has proved controversial as he has also donated to Just Stop Oil, the eco-activist group who stage disruptive protests.

Vince has previously described red meat as the 'most destructive' dietary choice for both humans and the planet.

Speaking at Labour's conference in Liverpool this evening, he repeated his warning that 'fossil fuels and animal farming are killing us'.

Vince set out how his Devil's Kitchen business wants to shake-up the provision of school meals, telling a conference fringe event: 'There's a law that says that schools have to put meat and dairy on the menu...

'We've worked with a lot of schools now for a lot of years. We're providing food to one in four English primary schools right now and some schools tell us it's a problem.

'Some schools want to go further, they don't want meat and dairy on the menu perhaps every day of the week - or even at all in some cases - but it's the law at the moment.

'I am hoping to have a conversation with the new Government at some point and encourage them to change the law.'

Under current rules, schools in England are required to serve a portion of food containing milk or dairy every day, and a portion of meat or poultry on three or more days each week.

Vince added that humans now 'know better' about meat consumption and 'we shouldn't be forcing these unhealthy products on our kids'.

He also outlined how his firm had been working on using grass to make gas 'for a number of years' and had since taken the idea 'a little further'.

'We set out to extract human edible protein from the grass and we've cracked that now, which is good for food safety approval,' Vince told the event.

He described how protein is extracted from grass through 'an organic process' and it then 'takes the form of a powder or granules, very much like soya protein or wheat protein, which you can add to food'.

'We make schools dinner, for example, in our Devil's Kitchen venture, and that's where we'll put our grass protein first,' he added.

Challenged as to whether he understood the message was that his company is going to feed grass to children, Vince replied: 'I do.'

Later during the event, as he answered questions from an audience, Vince was asked about recent proposals from the Danish government to encourage people to eat less meat.

These include a tax on livestock carbon dioxide emissions, which has been described as a world-first meat tax.

In his reply, Vince also noted a Dutch plan to reduce the reduce the number of livestock in the country.

'I saw the Dutch approach... which was to put a cap on the number of cows that are allowed to be grown in Holland because it's become a bit outsized for them,' he said.

'There will be more moves like that and they have to come because agriculture has become so dominant.

'There are 80 billion creatures a year in the world raised and killed just to feed us, eight billion people.

'The problem isn't that we have too many people on the planet, the problem is that we eat too much meat and dairy. That has to change.

'I haven't spoken to the Government about that, but if I can I will.'