Labour MP joins fight against plan for 'mega farm' in countryside

The workplace presently houses astir 7,000 pigs (Image: Google)

Protecting and ensuring the future of British farming has been a blistery taxable successful caller days and weeks - but is the manufacture successful information of morphing into an American factory-style model?

The Environment Agency has received 32 applications for 'mega farms' successful the past 3 years and immoderate workers are acrophobic companies volition usage readying reforms to their vantage to propulsion done arguable projects with dubious regulatory and payment standards.

One specified highly-publicised improvement is the bid of the UK's biggest nutrient supplier Cranswick to grow a modest-sized workplace betwixt the villages of Methwold and Feltwell successful Norfolk into 1 of the biggest concern sites successful Europe, with capableness for 870,000 chickens and 14,000 pigs.

Described by the institution arsenic a "sustainable and modern" farm, the plans person sparked unprecedented backlash, with implicit 15,000 incensed locals penning to the Borough Council of King's Lynn and West Norfolk, urging it to propulsion the exertion out.

The mill workplace would beryllium connected the borderline of beauteous Norfolk colony Methwold (Image: Google)

The objections suggest the workplace could airs a hazard to wellness done ammonia fumes and run groups Feedback and Sustain person besides accused Cranswick of "failing to supply details of expected greenhouse state emissions".

One idiosyncratic wrote: "Tourists volition halt coming to the country owed to the odor and pollution. House prices successful outlying towns and villages volition plummet... We volition nary longer beryllium capable to bask our gardens oregon countryside, we won't beryllium capable to bent retired washing oregon person barbecues."

"This benignant of mill workplace is wholly unnecessary with precise debased standards of carnal payment and volition interaction enormously connected the section roads," different added.

Terry Jermy, Labour MP for South West Norfolk, has besides written to the Environment Agency, urging it not to contented a licence for the task connected the grounds that it would origin "unnecessary and damaging contamination which volition adversely impact radical and biodiversity".

The nutrient giant, which supplies chickenhearted and pork to large supermarket chains, maintains that the improvement would origin "negligible disturbance" to the surrounding area" and has positioned it arsenic a means of safeguarding British nutrient production.

"The UK imports a batch of pork and chickenhearted arsenic determination is not capable produced successful the UK to conscionable this demand," a spokesperson told the Eastern Daily Press.

"The concern successful our farms is made utilizing champion disposable techniques to guarantee the astir sustainable and businesslike sites are developed and amended standards versus those already successful operation. It besides helps code the request for much information successful the UK nutrient chain."

However, Rebecca Mayhew, a husbandman successful Norfolk, told the paper that the plans bespeak a request for cheaper nutrient progressively not realistic for smaller cultivation sites. "These bigger companies are trying to instrumentality retired the middleman and power each portion of the proviso chain," she said.