A sour taste
by Marcus Fergusson
Nocton Dairies Ltd in Lincolnshire has submitted a planning application to build the largest dairy farm in Western Europe. 8,100 cows will produce up to 430,000 pints of milk a day while their slurry will generate enough electricity to power the farm and 2000 homes.
But there is a catch. Nocton Dairies will be a battery farm. The cows will spend the majority of their lives in eight vast indoor hangars, with limited access to pasture and sunshine. They will be milked three times a day in two 24-hour automated milking parlours, instead of twice as on conventional farms. Supporters claim this will make the cows more comfortable; opponents note it will increase yields by 15 per cent.
Inevitably, animal rights campaigners are up in arms. There is also the question of disease and cross-contamination. Whatever Nocton Dairies may argue, intensive farming practices have a poor record in this country – and only time will tell what effect these unnatural production methods may have on the milk. The growth in organics and ‘return to the land’ tv programmes are just two indicators of the public attitude towards industrial farming: Nocton Dairies is the antithesis of this trend.
These are important and emotive issues but there are also economic considerations that should make the planners pause before waving through the application. Nocton Dairies claim this method of intensive farming is the only way to produce milk economically. This cannot be true – otherwise our beleaguered dairy farmers would have long since ceased production. The fact is that milk is already produced economically but that the dairy farmer is not paid a fair price by the supermarkets. The difference between the farmgate price received by the farmer (an average in 2009 of 23.71 pence per litre) and the price at which milk retails (currently averaging £1.49 for four pints or 65.55 pence per litre) has long been a source of contention. Yet the question of whether government should stand up for our farmers has been dodged.
The Nocton Dairies scheme plays directly into the hands of the giant retailers. By producing milk ever more cheaply, Nocton will simply increase the pressure on the traditional dairy farmers. We have a choice: we can either pay a few pence more for each pint of milk or force the supermarkets to cut their profits. The battery alternative will only leave a sour taste in the mouth.
Sue Pritchard
Of all the ways in which this government has disappointed me, their approach to food and farming has got to be up there in the top three... (with Afghanistan, Iraq, FMD, financial crisis.... oh god - a depressing list already....)
Whilst food (and farming) are treated as industrial commodities, these things will just keep happening. The fundamental questions about how we support and sustain ourselves in an interconnected and interdependent society are just never asked or explored in public policy debates.
Since the FMD debacle, I think the relationship that Labour has had with farming has paralleled the Tories to mining in the 80s - they've seen it as something 'of the other side', alien and unfathomable. And their policy choices have reinforced this ever since.
We need political leadership that recognises the critical importance of food and farming to our society, which supports and sustains it for our wider health and well being and ensures that citizens understand that it is more important to produce - and pay the fair price for - a variety of healthy, safe, nutritious food available through many outlets, than it is to collude with supermarket interests under the cloak of 'cheap' food.
Julie Partridge
As a resident of Nocton I guess I have being paying more attention to these matters than perhaps I would have done if this application had been made by say Westminster or Somewhere else Dairies Ltd.
The unintended consequence for Nocton Dairies might well be the fact that consumers will now learn more about the process of milk production than any campaign Animal Rights might have initiated.
I now buy organic milk and ask the same questions about UK's food production policies for cheap food. The interconnectedness between the nation's health issues such as obesity and excessive diary production is just one of the debates we must have. Another would be the impact of inducement for generating alternative power through exploitation of animals through super/factory farming. These questions are bigger than simply a planning application and it is time we had them answered by those who are responsible for making such policies.
NEWTONMarcy31
The loans seem to be useful for guys, which would like to ground their own company. By the way, it's very comfortable to get a credit loan.
David Vinter
The trouble is that for every purchaser willing to pay extra for 'organic' there are thousands who just want food ever cheaper. So many care not one jot as to how it is produced, after all it has nothing to do with living animals has it? Labour governments have always swept how our food is produced 'under the carpet' as it were, largely through their own ignorance. And to hide the fact that meat production means actually killing something. You see my grandfather B1876, raised 5 children with no family allowance, largely due to his skill at 'setting snares', but what alternatives did he have? However the rabbit pies were good.
Sorry but if not 8000 cows then why not 4000, or 1000, yes there are big herds about already! So at what level is protest to be approved of?
Peter Newman
A sour taste indeed.
That may be from the higher mucus levels in the milk.
Regular milk, let alone milk form even more intensively farmed cows, as an average mucus level of around 18-20%. When people have a negative gut reaction to milk it tends to be because of this.
Organic milk has much lower levels of mucus - only a quarter of the mucus of regularly farmed milk, so is much healthier for humans.
I am more than happy to pay a higher price for a better quality product and support farmers.