Bunnies for Biofuel: How Sweden Heats its Homes

October 14, 2009 — -- Thousands of rabbits, some of them pets abandoned by their owners, are being shot, deep-frozen and burned in a heating plant in Sweden, a professional hunter who works for the city of Stockholm said on Tuesday.

The center of the Swedish capital is being plagued by thousands of rabbits, some of them wild and some of them stray pets, and 3,000 have been culled this year, down from 6,000 in 2008, Tommy Tuvunger, who hunts rodents for the Stockholm city administration, told SPIEGEL ONLINE.

"We are shooting rabbits in Stockholm center, they are a very big problem," said Tuvunger. The rabbits are eating their way through the city's central parks. "Once culled, the rabbits are frozen and when we have enough; a contractor comes and takes them away. "

Tuvunger said it was normal for animal carcasses to be processed for fuel. "The contractor doesn't just pick up rabbits, he also picks up cats, deer, horses and cows," said Tuvunger.

The frozen bunnies are shipped to a heating plant in Karlskoga in central Sweden which uses them as biofuel and incinerates them to heat homes, media reports said. A spokeswoman for the plant declined to comment. The plant's supplier, Konvex, a company that produces biofuels from animals, could not immediately be reached for comment.

Konvex is a subsidiary of Danish group Daka Biodiesel, which says on its Web site that it produces and markets biodiesel and bio fuel oil using animal fat extracted from "by-products from slaughterhouses and primary agriculture."