Large-scale farms have been flexing their muscles after campaign groups secured column inches in last week’s press.

Last summer Midlands Pig Producers put forward plans to build an intensive pig farm, housing up to 25,000 animals, in South Derbyshire. The application was withdrawn after South Derbyshire district council ruled that it needed to go to the county council. MPP are expected to reapply in the next few weeks. The proposed farm limit was set at 2,500 sows and 25,000 pigs in total, not due to issues of efficiency, but because any larger and the factory farm would create enough waste to classify the site as a power station, which would entail different planning permissions.

The Guardian yesterday revealed that the Soil Association, who opposed the MPP’s Plans, received a threatening letter from Carter-Ruck, a law firm specialising in defamation law and acting for Midlands Pig Producers, which alleges the association’s objection is defamatory and should be withdrawn.

Article 19 a libel reform campaign group denounced such practice as an abuse of the libel process, stating that it amounted to "legal bullying" aimed at stifling public debate, although MPP and Carter-Ruck deny this.

Soil Association policy director Lord Melchett explained the invidious position in which campaign groups can find themselves when dealing with big businesses, "It had a chilling effect, your first thought is, these are incredibly rich and powerful people; we have no assets, we will have to back down, not because we think we are wrong but because we don't have the resources. It's taken a lot of time to feel we can risk standing up to them."

Willes rails against dairy protestors

Addressing a Glasgow dairy conference this week Peter Willes, one of the farmers behind the Nocton Super-Dairy bid, has appeared in newspapers after voicing his frustration at the press the proposed super-dairy has been receiving. Willes claims that the level of discussion on the planning application for the dairy has been “dragged down by vegetarians and activists each with their own agenda”; he claims that the dairy’s detractors are opposing plans with little knowledge of dairy farming or animal welfare. However, several prominent policy and environmental organisations have publicly declared their concerns at the potential for water pollution from the site.  

On 5^th January, Nocton Dairies referred a local campaign group’s leaflet to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), citing factual inaccuracies and misleading information. The Nocton Dairies website stipulates their reasons for going to the ASA, “Nocton Dairies stresses that the concern is not over objections or criticism, but over false claims that could blur any real issues.” CAFFO (the Campaign Against Factory Farming Operations), who produced the leaflet, responded that their intention in doing so was to “balance Nocton Dairies’ propaganda with the alternative perspective”.

Deborah Wilson, a spokesperson for CAFFO, hailed Nocton Dairies’ response as a “back-handed compliment to the campaigners” in that the company was “propelled into employing bully-boy tactics by a single leaflet”. Wilson continued, “This is a blatant and quite pathetic attempt by a multi-million pound developer to intimidate local people - and it won’t win them any friends.  If they honestly didn’t anticipate local opposition, they were clearly naïve and unable to grasp the enormity of what they’re proposing.”  

For Nocton Dairies, Midlands Pig Producers and likeminded producers, industrial farming systems provide the only answer to questions of food security and stable profits when dealing with supermarkets. While the farmers involved claim that factory farming represents the future of livestock farming in the UK and stress that animal welfare and issues of sustainability are addressed in plans for both intensive-farms, Soil Association policy advisor Richard Young explained that  "In theory they are proposing a very clever system, but it's gold-plating a fundamentally flawed one. Past experience shows this brave new world approach to problems usually goes wrong and when it does the consequences for humans are very serious,"

Speaking of MPP’s proposals, Young, an expert on livestock disease, said “Our basic concern is that there is lots of research showing that the more pigs you have together the greater the risk of disease and the greater the potential for amplification of any problems.”

Conditions leading to UK’s inaugural super- farms

The debate over the future of farming in the face of inflation, a growing global population and climate change is one in which emotions run high. In the UK, Pig farmers have for a long time been hit by falling prices for their meat and rising costs. The UK herd shrank by more than 40% between 1997 and 2007. MPP chief executive Martin Barker, a former Waitrose pig farmer of the year, said that the proposed factory would be based around a "green cycle", using an anaerobic digester.

Barker told the Guardian, "We started from the standpoint that we wanted to be at the forefront of animal welfare and we consulted welfare groups like Compassion in World Farming before coming up with [our] innovations.”  The farmers involved in such operations seem to want the best for their animals and communities; however, there remains a wide breadth of opposition to intensive operations which serves to raise pertinent questions and promote debate on the future of farming. A litigation culture would stifle this to the detriment of all parties.  

Speaking of the legal action threatened by MPP, Lord Melchett has expressed alarm at the group’s response to the Soil Association’s objections. "It's the first time to my knowledge that a group like ours has been threatened for taking part in the democratic planning process, which is meant to be where citizens and those who represent different interests have the opportunity to air their case. If [big companies] are going to use libel laws to silence opposition, it does not bode well for the future of our food and farming industry."