The New £50 Will Be Made With Animal Fat, Bank Of England Confirms

The new £50, due to be issued after 2020, will contain animal fat, the Bank of England has confirmed.

The new polymer note will contain tallow, a hard fatty substance generally made from dead sheep or cows. Tallow is often used to make candles and soaps.

Currently, £5, £10 and the yet to be released £20 polymer notes are all made with tallow.

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"Within this process and after careful consideration, the Bank has decided that the composition of the polymer for the next £50 will be the same as for the current £5, £10 and £20," the Bank said in a statement.

The bank confirmed the note will contain less than 0.05 per cent of tallow, but Totally Vegan Buzz note "with more than 3.6 billion Bank of England notes in circulation that's a lot of animals".

The new £5 note was met with huge backlash in 2016 when it was revealed to contain the animal substance.

The Bank of England issued their current £50 note in 2011, featuring entrepreneur Matthew Boulton and the engineer James Watt.

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While we don't yet know whose face will grace the UK's highest denomination of cash, we do know it'll be a scientist.

Last year the Bank confirmed the note will celebrate a UK achievement in science and started a poll for the public to nominate who they'd like to see on the note.

The poll got 227,299 nominations and 989 eligible names for the new note, that is people who were all real, deceased and have contributed to science in the UK.

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Now, the bank committee will run focus groups and agree to a shortlist including focus groups which "help identify which characters on the long list would resonate strongly with people, and which might cause concern."

"We make the decision based on the characters' strengths, not how many nominations they get. We also take account of who we've chosen in the past, because we want to make sure we feature a wide diversity of people and fields on our notes," the Bank said.

The final decision about who will appear on the next banknote is made by the Governor and will be revealed in summer 2019.

Topics: Life News

Ciara Sheppard

Ciara is a freelance journalist working for Tyla. After graduating from the University of Sussex, Ciara worked as a writer at GLAMOUR Magazine and later as the Assistant Editor of Yahoo Style UK.

@ciarasheppard