Consultation on the controversial Nocton super dairy ended on Tuesday, seeing an unprecedented level of local and national opposition. The £34 million dairy is planned for development at Nocton Heath, Lincolnshire and will be fully operational by the end of 2012 if plans go ahead.

A Nocton Dairies spokesperson said this morning that "We have every confidence in the ability of the council and consultees to weigh up both application and comments on facts and relevance."

The consultation period to gauge public reaction to the planned super-dairy, which would house 3,770 cows, showed extensive opposition to the plans and made national news. Campaigning group 38 Degrees have referred to the American-style milking unit as a ‘cow factory’ and have collected over 75,000 signatures in an online petition against the plans. Local group CAFFO (Campaign Against Factory Farming Operations) has also been active in opposing the application.

38 Degrees claim that the proposed dairy will contribute to climate change and undermine more responsible, sustainable cattle farms in the area. The campaign surmises that “The Nocton mega-dairy would be bad news for cows, for the environment, for farmers and for people living nearby."

David Babbs, Executive Director of 38 Degrees, today told Farming Online that the level of support for the campaigns opposing Nocton Dairies’ plans demonstrates a “Breadth of concern about the proposal” and that “Despite what the businesses involved claim, most people don’t want to see farming going in this direction.”

In addition to the petition submitted by 38 degrees, 5,000 members have explained their grievances in letters to North Kesteven District Council. The Council told Farming Online this morning that "there have so far been 13,500 comments with 1953 having been processed and put online. The majority of comments are objections but we cannot be specific in terms of numbers. In regards to the 38 degrees petition, they said this will be recorded as a petition with a number of signatories."

Several well known personalities have also been vocal about their opposition to the proposed dairy, with Bill Oddie, Joanna Lumley and Jo Brand all raising their voices in opposition to the plans in recent months.

Nocton Dairies unconcerned by opposition

However, a spokesperson for Nocton Dairies Ltd told the Lincolnshire press on Wednesday that the company remains unconcerned about the campaign’s weight in numbers, saying “We've been concerned throughout about the level of misinformation and scaremongering from those opposing the plan. It is this that has driven so many people to sign petitions without even taking a single look at the facts in the application. However people want to portray it, this is simply a farm – albeit bigger than what we're used to in Britain.”

The company maintain that the 22-acre site, which will produce 220,000 litres (387,000 pints) of milk a day, will still be a humane environment as they say cows will be kept in small herds of 420 cows, the same size as currently exists on many UK farms. Speaking to the BBC, spokesperson Peter Willes denied that the dairy was a battery or factory farm, claiming that cows will have outdoor access for 6 months a year.  

Happy faces

A recent Panorama documentary exploring the industrialisation of farming, in which BBC reporter Paul Kenyon and organic dairy farmer Tony Gillett visited a super-dairy, similar to the one proposed for Nocton, in the USA, yielded unexpected results. Gillett described the experience as “So emotional”, exclaiming “You can see their [dairy cows’] faces, they’re happy. You can see they’re happy”. More information and a short video clips are available here. 

Food and Water Watch question plans

Despite the assurances of Nocton Dairies, a report published on Tuesday (11^th January) by Brussels’ Food and Water Watch stated that plans did not outline adequate water or waste management. Food & Water Watch Director Wenonah Hauter explained “It looks to us like this application fails in several respects on planning regulations, but the bigger problems revolve around adequate supply of water for the thousands of animals they want to keep and a place to put all the waste they will generate. Water from the local aquifer is already fully committed supplying homes and farms.”

The planning application can be viewed at North Kesteven District Council’s planning page by clicking here and entering the reference code: 10/1397/FUL

The final decision on whether the application will go through will be made in March.