ANIMAL rights campaigners have taken to the streets of Uttoxeter to get their message heard — and have been heartened by the response from the townsfolk.
William Maxwell and Roger Swaine, of Derby Animal Rights, set up a stand in The Maltings asking people to sign a petition against a pig farm planned for Foston.
Midland Pig Producers (MPP) has applied to Derbyshire County Council for permission to build a 30-acre farm in Uttoxeter Road, able to house up to as many as 26,000 pigs, which has received complaints from residents and campaigners alike.
The campaigners said they received strong support and a lot of interest from passers-by in the town, claiming the effect of the proposal could be devastating for Uttoxeter area farmers.
Mr Swaine, 39,said: “It is a rural community around here and we have had a lot of local farmers expressing their concerns about the pig farm.
“They already have enough competition from Europe and this is going to make it worse for them.
“This is not a farmer setting up the business — it is a company, Midlands Pig Producers (MPP), based in Burton and they have going about things the wrong way.
“This proposed operation is modelled on what they do in the US which has led to environmental consequences.
“One is the the waste going into waterways, and hopefully the council will take that into account.
“Because the animals are crammed into sheds, they need antibiotics to keep disease down and the diseases evolve to combat the antibiotics.
“In the US, close to 50 per cent of meat has a strain of the drug resistant virus.” Throughout the day, the duo collected 166 signed objections which were delivered to Derbyshire County Council by Friday.
Along with signatures collected in Derby and Matlock, over 1,000 letters were submitted to the authority.
Mr Swaine said: “It was certainly quieter than Derby when we did the same thing, but the strength of feeling against the proposed factory farm was much greater.
“I believe this might be due to Uttoxeter being a smaller market town, with many people coming from a rural background.
“We were genuinely surprised by the number of people who were aware of the Protest against massive pig plant comes to town factory farm through the media reports and a recent BBC Countryfile programme, and were adamantly against it.” Mr Maxwell, 27, of Doveridge, said: “It is more about the freedom of the animals, it will mean that more animals will be put into these factories.
“It will dwarf a lot of the farms in the area, especially those with free range animals “Things should be getting better for the animals but thgey are not — they are getting worse.
“If this is successful, they will start building more of these mega-intensive farms. It is so much larger than the smaller traditional farms.
“How will free range, traditional farmers compete with this? With it being Uttoxeter, we can speak to a lot of the people without any helpers.
“With it being so good, with many people signing the petition, we wish we had invited the others along.” Mr Swaine, of Derby, said Uttoxeter residents had been ‘really motivated’ about the campaign, with one saying they had already logged their complaint with the council.
He said the company behind the proposals believes that eventually, all farms will be like this.
