Pig Business reply to a recent article in the Yorkshire Post:
All eyes on ‘revolution’ in pig farming, Yorkshire Post 9th May 2011
Dear Sir,
Foston Pig Farm
The ‘green circle’ initiative, which has been widely included in Midland Pig Producers publicity material, as well as in the Environmental Statement that accompanied their planning application, needs some clarification. A letter from Carter Ruck, lawyers for MPP who threatened to sue the Soil Association if it did not withdraw its objections to the mega farm, describes the scheme as being trialled ‘with the specific purpose of including locally grown beans to mix into our client’s pigs’ diet.’ Does MPP commit to not using any imported soya? Most soya comes from South America where it is commonly grown on cleared Rainforest or Cerrados habitats, poisoning the soil with pesticides and depriving local people of land on which to grow their food.
The Environmental Statement also describes the sows’ living conditions. The floor incorporates an ‘innovative concrete and plastic slatted floor which allows all pig waste to pass through into the water tanks below’. The slatted floor system is not an innovation, it is used by almost all factory pig farms in the world. The tanks will not hold just water, you can be sure. The toxic fumes from the untreated faeces and urine in the ‘water tanks’ cause 25% of factory farm workers in the US to suffer permanent lung damage.
‘The large areas of storage under the buildings together with a further water storage tank will provide water or slurry storage’ Is this the 75 X 25 metre uncovered tank shown on the plans? Could this be new way to describe a slurry lagoon, a dreadful cesspit of untreated waste which breeds flies, spreads disease and emits toxic fumes which poison neighbours? As tanks like this age the soil underneath them can settle causing them to leak, contaminating the water table with pig waste and nitrates.
If, after all there turn out to be the same problems of smell, disease risk and contamination as there are with almost all other intensive pig farms, the people who will suffer most will be the inmates of Foston Hall Prison. Their cells and yards are downwind from the prevailing westerlies, and their windows open towards the slurry and water tank, a likely breeding ground for flies which a recent US report has found can spread antibiotic resistant bacteria.
Earlier this year the British Government was found to be in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights by denying voting rights to prisoners. Have the prisoners at Foston been informed of the application, and has the planning committee considered their views? If the prisoners are denied an input into the process, the council might find itself in breach of the Convention and liable for damages to prisoners whose rights have been denied them.
Your article emphasises that the new farm will meet RSPCA welfare standards which insist that pigs have access to straw or similar materials and that when farrowing, the sows must have ‘clean, dry straw which is well shaken up, or other suitable bedding’. However MPP’s plans ‘to deliver sufficient product, probably chopped straw mixed with feed, to each pen in the shed to allow rooting and foraging behaviour’ may fall short of this requirement as chopped straw may not be sufficiently manipulable to meet either the EC Pig Welfare Directive or the more stringent RSPCA Freedom Food Standards.
Finally, because the piglets will be weaned at only 3-4 weeks, before their immune system has properly developed, the pigs are likely to require routine preventative antibiotics, a common feature of intensive indoor farming. (Organic farms usually wean at 40 days, nearly six weeks.) The World Health Organization identified widespread use of antimicrobials outside human medicine as a ‘serious concern given the alarming emergence in humans of bacteria, which have acquired, through this use, resistance to antimicrobials.’ Although MPP’s lawyers have claimed that the bio-digester process produces an odourless, pathogen- free fertiliser, the Soil Association has pointed to a report that shows that the temperature inside the bio-digester is not hot enough to kill Clostridium difficile, a dangerous disease which has been found in British pigs and which may be passed to humans.
Yours sincerely,
Alastair Kenneil (Pig Business Co-Director)
Dear Sir,
Foston Pig Farm
The ‘green circle’ initiative, which has been widely included in Midland Pig Producers publicity material, as well as in the Environmental Statement that accompanied their planning application, needs some clarification. A letter from Carter Ruck, lawyers for MPP who threatened to sue the Soil Association if it did not withdraw its objections to the mega farm, describes the scheme as being trialled ‘with the specific purpose of including locally grown beans to mix into our client’s pigs’ diet.’ Does MPP commit to not using any imported soya? Most soya comes from South America where it is commonly grown on cleared Rainforest or Cerrados habitats, poisoning the soil with pesticides and depriving local people of land on which to grow their food.
The Environmental Statement also describes the sows’ living conditions. The floor incorporates an ‘innovative concrete and plastic slatted floor which allows all pig waste to pass through into the water tanks below’. The slatted floor system is not an innovation, it is used by almost all factory pig farms in the world. The tanks will not hold just water, you can be sure. The toxic fumes from the untreated faeces and urine in the ‘water tanks’ cause 25% of factory farm workers in the US to suffer permanent lung damage.
‘The large areas of storage under the buildings together with a further water storage tank will provide water or slurry storage’ Is this the 75 X 25 metre uncovered tank shown on the plans? Could this be new way to describe a slurry lagoon, a dreadful cesspit of untreated waste which breeds flies, spreads disease and emits toxic fumes which poison neighbours? As tanks like this age the soil underneath them can settle causing them to leak, contaminating the water table with pig waste and nitrates.
If, after all there turn out to be the same problems of smell, disease risk and contamination as there are with almost all other intensive pig farms, the people who will suffer most will be the inmates of Foston Hall Prison. Their cells and yards are downwind from the prevailing westerlies, and their windows open towards the slurry and water tank, a likely breeding ground for flies which a recent US report has found can spread antibiotic resistant bacteria.
Earlier this year the British Government was found to be in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights by denying voting rights to prisoners. Have the prisoners at Foston been informed of the application, and has the planning committee considered their views? If the prisoners are denied an input into the process, the council might find itself in breach of the Convention and liable for damages to prisoners whose rights have been denied them.
Your article emphasises that the new farm will meet RSPCA welfare standards which insist that pigs have access to straw or similar materials and that when farrowing, the sows must have ‘clean, dry straw which is well shaken up, or other suitable bedding’. However MPP’s plans ‘to deliver sufficient product, probably chopped straw mixed with feed, to each pen in the shed to allow rooting and foraging behaviour’ may fall short of this requirement as chopped straw may not be sufficiently manipulable to meet either the EC Pig Welfare Directive or the more stringent RSPCA Freedom Food Standards.
Finally, because the piglets will be weaned at only 3-4 weeks, before their immune system has properly developed, the pigs are likely to require routine preventative antibiotics, a common feature of intensive indoor farming. (Organic farms usually wean at 40 days, nearly six weeks.) The World Health Organization identified widespread use of antimicrobials outside human medicine as a ‘serious concern given the alarming emergence in humans of bacteria, which have acquired, through this use, resistance to antimicrobials.’ Although MPP’s lawyers have claimed that the bio-digester process produces an odourless, pathogen- free fertiliser, the Soil Association has pointed to a report that shows that the temperature inside the bio-digester is not hot enough to kill Clostridium difficile, a dangerous disease which has been found in British pigs and which may be passed to humans.
Yours sincerely,
Alastair Kenneil
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