In a bizarre exchange with children on Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson seemingly joked that feeding humans to animals could aid the conservation of wildlife.

Speaking alongside World Wildlife Fund UK chief executive Tanya Steele at a Downing Street meeting with youngsters, Boris Johnson attacked the plastics industry, called for more eating of synthetic meat, and even suggested feeding humans to animals.

Ms Steele told the children: “I think we need to bring nature back… Our planet, 97 per cent of the mass of mammals on this planet is humans and our animals, our domestic animals. Just 3 per cent is left for the wild.”

The Prime Minister replied that the situation was “so sad” and added: “We could feed some of the human beings to the animals.”

“We could have a vote later and ask if there are any candidates,” Ms Steele quipped in return.

In response to the comments, Brexit leader Nigel Farage questioned if the Prime Minister had started drinking again, saying that the PM seems to have “lost his marbles”.

“Once again we see the Prime Minister absolutely, completely in the grip of the Richmond Greens, those for whom a £12,000 heat pump doesn’t really matter,” he said, referencing the government’s net-zero plan to cut out gas boilers.

While Mr Johnson was apparently making the comments in jest, the green movement has long called for population control as a means of reducing carbon emissions and thereby supposedly saving the world from climate change.

Earlier this month, for example, the former chairman of Britain’s Financial Services Authority (FSA), Lord Adair Turner, argued that countries in the Western world should welcome falling fertility rates, as it will enable them to achieve emission reduction goals.

Unlike Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, who actually won an award for committing to have fewer children, the British leader revealed last month that he is expecting his seventh child later this year.

Mr Johnson, who is set to host the upcoming United Nations COP26 climate change summit in Glasgow, went on to tell the children that lab-grown meat substitutes will a key element in the world’s climate strategy in the future.

“I think in the future we will move away from eating as much [meat] … already science is producing meat substitutes that are basically engineered in the lab that are very like meat,” he said per the Daily Mail.

“And you won’t be able to tell the difference between a bio-engineered hamburger and a real hamburger. That will be the future very soon, it is already here I think.”

Downplaying expectations for his big climate summit, in which he is set to lay out his Build Back Better vision for humanity, Mr Johnson said that he is “worried” that not enough countries will commit to net-zero, as he has pledged the United Kingdom will reach by the year 2050.

Concerns have been raised that the summit will fail to make any meaningful impact on emissions, with Russian leader Vladimir Putin snubbing the meeting and Chinese dictator Xi Jinping — the head of the world’s biggest polluter — also unlikely to attend.

Downing Street later clarified that Johnson was merely expressing the “realistic situation” about the prospects of COP26, with a spokesman saying: “We have made some progress with a number of countries, Saudi Arabia has come forward with some commitments, for example.

“But the Prime Minister was simply setting out the realistic situation that bringing together countries from around the world to sign up to ambitious targets such as these that require tangible commitments is difficult and challenging and will require some intense negotiation.”

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