Action Centre

Urge Council to Reject Application for Dairy Factory Farm in Powys

In July 2010, Fraser Jones submitted an application to expand an existing dairy farm in order to house 1,000 cows. The application was later withdrawn before being resubmitted. Now we have one final chance to prevent this monstrosity from happening before the final decision is made. If approved, the plan would condemn 1,000 cows to a life of misery and suffering. The resubmission contained cosmetic changes but would mean the same suffering for cows.

Cows on dairy factory farms are forced to produce unnaturally high yields of milk, pushing their bodies to exhaustion. They are repeatedly impregnated only to have their calves torn away from them within a mere day or two of birth. Female calves spend their first few weeks in tiny stalls, and at 15 months of age, they enter the same hellish cycle as their mothers. Male calves, who are deemed surplus waste of the dairy industry, are either shot at birth or sold to the veal industry. Cows have a natural lifespan of about 20 years or more, but most in the dairy industry are killed between the ages of 4 and 7 (and many are often pregnant at the time of slaughter).

Cows in normal-sized dairy herds of approximately 120 already suffer extreme pain, distress and discomfort. The plan to house 1,000 cows on one farm will inevitably guarantee nothing but a rise in the incidence of disease, infection and suffering.

Please help stop this monstrous unit from being erected.

Please send a polite letter to the Powys County Council voicing your objection to the application.

Subject

I am appalled at the thought of Mr Fraser Jones' application (P/2011/0156) to expand an existing dairy unit in order to house 1,000 cows. Cows on intensive dairy farms are forced to produce unnaturally high yields of milk. They are repeatedly impregnated, and their calves are torn away from them within 48 hours of birth. Despite a natural life expectancy of 20 years or more, most cows on dairy factory farms are physically spent and slaughtered before reaching their seventh birthday.

Not only is factory farming a living nightmare for animals, it also has a severely detrimental effect on the environment, both locally and nationally. Locally, farm traffic, noise and unpleasant odours can all cause an unacceptable disruption. Furthermore, it is now universally recognised that on a global scale, farmed animals are among the main contributors to the greenhouse-gas emissions that cause climate change. A recent United Nations report concluded that the livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.

Local governments should adopt policies that encourage a move away from dairy and meat consumption and towards sustainable projects aimed at reinvigorating land to grow crops and feed people directly. Intensive farming also creates a much greater risk of disease in animals and contributes to the spread of diseases to the human population, as we have seen with mad cow disease, new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, bird flu, swine flu and many other diseases. Hans-Gerhard Wagner, a senior officer with the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, has called the industrial farming of livestock an "opportunity for emerging disease".

The massive opposition to the recent Nocton Dairies application in Nocton, Lincs, highlighted the strength of feeling surrounding such proposals and cannot be ignored. It is very clear that the best thing we can do for animals and the environment is to end factory farming. I urge you to refuse planning permission for this development.

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