Eating away the problem - 3rd November 2023

An eco-friendly restaurant in London, named Silo, is bringing invasive species to the table. Silo dishes up non-native species which are negatively impacting the UK's ecosystem.

Silo's intention is to raise awareness of the destructive impact of these non-native species. Many of them are edible and are highly nutritious. Head chef Douglas McMaster highlights that by adding them to the menu Silo's minimising their damage to the local ecosystem.

Douglas McMaster: "So the idea of the invasive dinner series is to creatively popularise species that are detrimental to the environment. So American Signal crayfish, Japanese knotweed, grey squirrel. These are all forces of destruction within our environment, they're all edible, they're all delicious. You'll have to take my word for it."

Silo's current dishes feature the signal crayfish, which is a species imported from the USA to aquafarms in the UK. However, they've become a major threat to the local ecosystem. Professor Karim Vahed believes this is an example of the destructive impact invasive species can have.

Karim Vahed: "Invasive, non-native species are a major threat to biodiversity. Really, they're one of the major reasons, in addition to for example habitat change, climate change, invasive non-native species are another major reason for the decline of so many species that are threatened with extinction."

All ingredients on the menu are gathered from the wild. Silo's intention is for harmful species to decline in numbers, which reduces the possibility of taking over the environment. However, this lack of commercial availability increases the time it takes to prepare meals.

Douglas McMaster: "For a dinner like tonight, we've probably spent a thousand hours of time to bring it to reality. And that's because yeah, these are not commercially available."

Although Vahed stresses the negative impact of invasive species, he opposes Silo's solution. He fears that this might contribute to the problem by driving up demand for these new ingredients. However, chef McMaster thinks differently.

Douglas McMaster: "The idea isn't to popularise these invasive species so there's so much of a demand that we allow them to become more invasive or overpopulate even further just to keep up with that demand. So, that would be the terrible thing to occur. I hope that we bring back balance within the ecosystem and then we stop eating them."