ORGANIC food and animal welfare campaigners are to hold a public meeting tomorrow to rally support against plans for a massive pig farm near Uttoxeter.
The Soil Association and Pig Business film team will stage the session tomorrow at Burton Town Hall to galvanise opposition to Midland Pig Producers’ (MPP) proposal to build the business on 28 hectares of land in Foston.
Soil Association publicity said the meeting would be ‘open to anyone interested in helping to stop the introduction of a proposed indoor pig factory and those who want to find out more about the harmful impacts these kind of super-sized systems may have on human health, the environment, local communities and animal welfare’.
A film called The Dark Side of Factory Farming and presentations on megafarms will be screened during the 7pm to 9pm session, and a panel of experts will debate these developments and answer questions from the floor.
Panellists will include Peter Melchett, the Soil Association’s policy director; Linda Wardle, a campaigner who helped thwart a mega-dairy farm proposal in Lincolnshire; Marchioness Tracy Worcester, Pig Business film producer and campaign director; and activists from Derbyshire.
Organisers announced the meeting on the day Dominic West, star of television police drama The Wire, visited the site of the proposed farm to — in the words of the Soil Association — ‘support opposition against a dramatic escalation of pig farming in the UK’.
“The Foston proposal signals a fundamental shift in British farming towards the US and EU system of giant, corporate- owned factories confining thousands of pigs in buildings and feeding them antibiotics to keep them alive,” West said.
“Treating pigs as industrial production units on such an intensive level is not only shameful but also unsustainable.
“It is the antithesis of what people want the British countryside and farming to be and it poses a potential threat to human health and the environment, as outlined in the Soil Association’s and Environment Agency’s objections.” MPP has insisted the plans, which have drawn thousands of objections, are ‘eco-friendly’ and will harness methane produced by 2,500 sows to drive a generator feeding the national grid.
While it has rebuffed allegations the farm will produce ‘bad smells’, the firm has also said it has been consulting animal welfare experts about plans to keep the pigs in pens.
