UK Edition
Fatty fivers are here to stay: Bank of England will not pulp the new five pound notes - but may bow to vegan pressure over twenties
The Bank of England could use palm oil or coconut oil when it makes the new plastic £20 note, after vegans complained that tallow - made from animal fat - is used in the production of the £5 notes, which came into use in September.
Officials will launch a consultation next month on the production process for the polymer £20 note, which is due to be introduced in 2020.
However palm oil itself is also a controversial product as environmentalists blame palm plantations for the destruction of jungles and other valuable forest ecosystems.
The Bank says it will not withdraw the fiver and that it is too late to cancel the introduction of the new plastic £10 note in September of this year because 275 million tenners have already been printed.
That £10 note had also been affected by other protests. It will bear the image of Jane Austen, a decision that followed complaints that the cash in circulation failed to honour important women from British history and public life.
Withdrawing the waterproof and rip-resistant fivers would waste the £46m spent on printing the notes as well as incurring the same cost over again, officials said, explaining the decision to keep them in circulation.
It would also risk leaving the public with a shortage of cash, and mean reverting to the older paper notes, which disintegrate more quickly and are more prone to counterfeiting, the Bank of England said.
On top of that, cashpoints, supermarket self-service checkouts and other machines have already been adapted to use the polymer notes and may have to be re-engineered to go back to paper.
“An extremely small amount of tallow is used in an early stage of the production process of polymer pellets, which are then used to create the base substrate for the £5 note. The Bank is continuing to work closely with banknote polymer suppliers to determine what alternatives might be available,” the Bank said.
If it does decide to use plant-based oils instead of tallow, the new notes will need to go through more rigorous testing to make sure they do not affect the quality and durability of the currency.
“Producing banknotes is complicated,” the Bank added.
Before introducing the hardier polymer notes and removing the paper ones from circulation, the Bank surveyed the public and found 87pc favoured the new plastic fivers, which launched in September 2016.
The Bank only discovered in November, following a question from a member of the public, that tallow was involved in the production process, resulting in criticism from some religious and vegan groups.
