_edited_edited.jpg)
Cranswick plc, one of the UK’s biggest pork producers, has submitted a planning application to build a mega factory farm in West Norfolk that would house 870,000 chickens and 14,000 pigs at one time. That's around 6.7 million chickens and 48,000 pigs per year. If you're as appalled as we are, here's how you can make your voice heard to stop the slaughter before it begins.
Why It's A Problem
Factory farms have severe environmental, social, and economic impacts. Environmentally, they contribute to biodiversity loss, significant greenhouse gas emissions, and water pollution. Socially, they undermine food security, pose health risks, and degrade local communities. Economically, they often benefit large corporations over local communities, reduce job opportunities due to mechanisation, and harm local industries and property values. For much more information on the impacts of factory farms, you can read our new research here.
As a society, we must invest in a truly sustainable future, rather than blindly
stumbling backwards into the dark, well-trodden realm of meat-churning, pollution-belching mega farms such as these. This is why it is so vital that we fight proposals for new factory farms.
How To Object
Sending your objection is quick, easy, and anyone can do it. By clicking the button below, you can add your name to our objection template and send it off within seconds. Please note that the link may not work for all email providers, if it doesn't work for you, please copy and paste the email template at the bottom of this page. Remember to add your name and home address at the end!
Alternatively, you can leave your objection as a comment directly on the council's planning portal.
OBJECTION LETTER:
I object to the applications: 22/00866/FM and 22/00860/FM.
The proposed developments are inherently unsustainable and violate the principles of sustainable development as outlined in the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). They do not meet the environmental, social, or economic objectives necessary for sustainable development as detailed below:
Environmental Impact:
Insufficient groundwater to sustain this facility The Catchment Abstraction Licencing Strategy (1) states that “[t]he groundwater availability map shows in this catchment that there is no water available for new consumptive abstraction across all groundwater units”. As a result, the Environment Authority may be unable to renew the applicant’s water abstraction licence in 2027, if to do so would breach the Habitats Directive by not protecting sites from degradation.
Emissions and water extraction will impact protected habitats: The Protected Habitat Sites (Breckland Special Protection Areas (SPA), Breckland Special Areas of Conservation (SAC), and Norfolk Valley Fens SAC along with the accompanying Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) are in the vicinity of this development. In this areas are European Protected Species of birds (such as stone curlew), fish, plants, habitats and other wild animals (such as badgers), and chalk rivers. These may all be negatively impacted by i) the over-abstraction of water (as identified above), ii) air pollution (ammonia is already above critical loads in this area), and iii) water pollution in the form of nitrates from the animal waste, and anaerobic digestate. The predicted increase in concentration of ammonia is 600 times greater than the 1% level applied by Natural England for protected habitat sites, at some locations, and greater than the allowed 1% increase across all sites.
Risk to aquatic life: The Applicant plans to use the Anaerobic Digestion facility: Warren Energy Breckland Farm Brandon Road Methwold Norfolk IP26 FUL/2021/0011 & FUL/2021/0013 (ES1 p328 Table 14:1). ADs have caused catastrophic fish kills (2). Afonydd Cymru advises that Planning authorities should include the spreading of digestate from AD plants in their environmental considerations when deciding on new developments such as poultry units. Case studies have demonstrated a link between extremely high phosphorous levels in water and spreading of digestate (3).
Failure to properly assess Greenhouse Gas Emissions from developments: Climate change is likely to be exacerbated by i) the increased greenhouse gases from the installations, ii) transport of animals, meat processing and packaging, and iii) deforestation for animal feed, breaching the Paris Agreement Net Zero commitments. R (Finch) v Surrey County Council [2024] UKSC 20 confirmed that scope 3 downstream emissions should be evaluated for large development projects. There are examples from other countries of factory farming calculating emissions (4). Standards and tools for calculating scope 3 emissions in agriculture are already being developed, for example by Greenhouse Gas Protocol (5). The applicant measures GHG on a business wide level yet have provided no information on how many emissions this installation will cause. A Climate Change Impact assessment must be required.
Flawed arguments regarding ammonia emissions: The habitats assessment compares the proposed development’s ammonia emissions with the ‘fallback alternative,’ (to farm 30,000 pigs instead ESv1, 2.50]) arguing that the proposal would lead to less emissions than the fallback alternative [s7.5 Ammonia HRA]. We query whether the fallback alternative is realistic. A more appropriate baseline may in fact be the ‘do-nothing’ alternative which would be to continue farming the current number of pigs on site: 7,500.
Flawed in-combination evaluation: 110 new dwellings are planned to be built within 2km and yet all have been excluded from the in-combination evaluation. (ESv1 page 296 actual page: 328, table 14:1). We are concerned about the water usage from these dwellings, and water pollution from sewage, in combination with the water usage and pollution from the installation. A poultry unit only 500m away (Methwold Airfield, Brandon Road, Methwold 16/01963/FM Construction of poultry unit.) has also been excluded because it was built in 2018. We query whether this is the correct approach since the poultry unit will continue to emit ammonia as long as it is standing.
Increase in traffic: The installation will lead to “a 218% increase in annual traffic movements and could be considered a 'substantial' impact based on relevant IEMA Guidance.” (ES3 s7.57).
Social and Economic Impact - The applicant has breached its environmental permit 12 times at its intensive pig installation in Stow Bedon, where at least 380 complaints have been made by residents, mostly about odours and noise, leading to serious questions about both the modelling and management plans used for odour and noise by the applicant. Other concerns include:
Impacts on public health: The facility poses the following threats to public and employee health: i) air pollution from the ammonia emissions from the farm and slurry ii) air pollution from the 200% increase in traffic movements iii) risk of bird and pig flu (6), iv) antibiotic resistance due to antibiotic overuse, and v) increased availability of red meat (pork being considered red meat) and processed meat products which are probably (red meat) or definitely (processed meat) carcinogenic, according to the WHO.
Impacts on residents and business: Local residents and local businesses may be negatively impacted by i) the lack of water availability, ii) odours, iii) air pollution in the form of ammonia a) from the farm itself and b) spreading of manure from the farm, iv) negative impact on the protected habitat sites (lowering tourism), and v) unattractive visual presence of the large installations.
Factory farming leads to increased costs for the public: These costs include things such as: i) treating/ dealing with water pollution ii) costs to the NHS relating to illness caused by pollution, pandemics, antibiotic resistance etc.
Poor animal welfare has environmental, social and economic impacts: Significant animal welfare breaches were recorded on one of Cranswick’s pig farms in 2023 with pigs dumped in bins, covered in filth, and cannibalising each other (7). Conditions such as these not only are hugely distressing for the animals, but create environments in which disease is more likely to occur and can have huge public health consequences. Efforts to provide assurance in the form of private farm accreditation schemes should be given little weight. Red Tractor and RSPCA assured farms have been repeatedly exposed for horrific conditions (8). The proposed development would achieve RSPCA standards, yet the RSPCA assured scheme has been widely discredited, with the organisation’s own president calling on it to drop the assured scheme (9). The presence of the Animal Welfare Act (2006) and the Animal Sentience Act (2022) make it appropriate for the local planning authority to consider animals as individuals deserving a good life. Pigs, like dogs, are sentient, intelligent creatures capable of emotion and suffering (10). Chickens are also socially, emotionally, and cognitively complex creatures (11). Factory farms lead to overcrowding, which leads to stress and the need for painful mutilations, which are incompatible with high welfare standards.
4. Sonja Siegl et al, ‘Addressing dairy industry's scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions by efficiently managing farm carbon footprints,’ Environmental Challenges, Volume 11,2023, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envc.2023.100719. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667010023000434)
6. Mace JL and Knight A (2023) Influenza risks arising from mixed intensive pig and poultry farms, with a spotlight on theUnited Kingdom. Front. Vet. Sci. 10:1310303. doi: 10.3389/fvets.2023.1310303
8. See ‘Red Tractor Overview - Can it be Trusted?’ Viva! <https://viva.org.uk/red-tractor-overview/> , and ‘RSPCA Assured: Covering Up Cruelty on an Industrial Scale’
10. Marino, L., Colvin, C., ‘Thinking Pigs: A Comparative Review of Cognition, Emotion, and Personality in Sus domesticus’ International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 28(1) 2015 doi: 10.46867/ijcp.2015.28.00.04 <https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8sx4s79c>
11. Marino, L. Thinking chickens: a review of cognition, emotion, and behavior in the domestic chicken. Anim Cogn 20, 127–147 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-016-1064-4 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-016-1064-4
(YOUR NAME AND HOME ADDRESS HERE)
Comments