Fats and Oils

Question

Hoping someone can give me simple and unambiguous advice - I know this has been discussed before, sorry, but the advice out there seems to be conflicting.

Making up winter feeding mixtures, the advice has always been that it's better to use hard, saturated animal fats such as lard and suet as they provide more, sustained energy. I understand that, and we don't need to go over it. But recently there seems to have been a strong message (perceived as?) going out from RSPB and others (and repeated back to me by a number of wildlife gardeners) that unsaturated fats, e.g. vegetable oils, are actually bad for birds - despite these originating from the same nuts and seeds that we feed regularly in the garden (sunflower, peanut) or that wild birds forage on in farmland (rape and flax seed etc.).

Doesn't sound right to me, and I can't help thinking that people are getting the wrong end of the stick. Surely it's better for us to use vegetable fats and oils, if that's what we have available, rather than putting out lower-energy mixtures of cereals, fruit etc. with no fat in them for fear of doing more harm than good? I should add that ours is a vegetarian household, so the birds are getting vegetable fats or nothing from us!

This is coming up again and again, particularly as some water companies are offering householders fat traps (to avoid problems with blocked drains) and encouraging their customers to use waste fats and oils to make fat balls. Is it really that bad to use leftover oil or waste from your roasting tin to feed the birds? What if it's only vegetable fats (as in our case as vegetarians)? RSPB advice suggests that oils and soft fats can be a problem if they get onto birds' feathers, but we always absorb ours into lots of grains/cereals, and mix with fruit, so it doesn't feel greasy when we put it out on our feeding tray.

It seems a waste to throw away a good resource, and in these economic conditions I can't necessarily justify going out and buying any more fat snacks specifically for bird feeding. On top of this, my personal politics are that it is morally dubious to be raising farm animals just to render them down into lard to feed wild animals. I don't want to do anything that's actually harmful though, so if it's really a problem I'll just stop feeding fat altogether and go back to offering nuts, grains, seeds and mealworms, and maintaining a wildlife-friendly garden where birds can forage for worms and insects.

Cheers for your comments and advice!

Bob Eades · Accepted Answer

Thanks doggie, Tom and everyone. So what I'm taking away from this is that, as I assumed, the oil isn't harmful in itself. The 'uncooked pastry' is similar to what I do already - mixing the oil in with leftover flour and oats or other cereals so that the oil is absorbed and not free on the surface to get onto birds' feathers, and then mixing it with seeds, leftover chopped fruit etc. I'll carry on doing that with a clear conscience! 
 Even used oil is probably OK for me as a vegetarian as it's not mixed with meat juices (that might create a breeding ground for bacteria) and I don't generally add salt to my roasting dish - I know that salt is very very bad for birds! 
 Cheers!