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All eyes on ‘revolution’ in pig farming
large white cross landrace pigs at Povey farm Norton, Sheffield: Picture Chris Lawton 12 Jan 2009
MANY pig farmers are wishing luck to a “megafarm” proposal in Derbyshire, despite warnings it could undercut smaller producers.
And they have qualified support from animal welfare campaigners Compassion In World Farming. Both mainstream farmers and the CIWF think that the opposition to the Derbyshire proposal has ignored many interesting elements of it, including a commitment to RSPCA welfare standards.
Midland Pig Producers, the company behind the proposal for Foston, near Derby, also thinks it has not been given enough credit for inventive thinking on environmental issues. On a website explaining its case, at www.mppfoston.com, the company says its plan amounts to “the next agricultural revolution”.
Most pig farms depend on imported soya products. This one would get all its own feed grown locally and would supply the growers with all the nitrogen-based fertiliser they needed using odourless by-product from an anaerobic digester. The digester would be fed with manure and gases from the pigs and a bit of top-up from waste food which would roughly equal the pork production – a “green circle” with next-to-nil resource consumption or environmental emissions.
The digester, and a system for recovering body heat from the pigs, would supply enough heating for both the farm and the prison next door – and generate enough electricity to power the farm’s feed mill and supply a surplus to the National Grid. The digester would be built to an American design, not yet used widely in this country, and would be fed with manure and straw washed into it while still warm, for maximum efficiency.
The pigs would have straw bedding, RSPCA-recommended allocations of space and RSPCA-approved farrowing pens, for the 2,500 breeding sows to give birth to the 20,000 piglets which would be turned into butchers’ animals every year.
Midland Pig Producers says: “This environment is radically different to conventional systems as it is believed to be the first system in the world that has the ability to house pigs without the need to tail dock – the holy grail of animal rights groups.”
There are bigger pig units in the UK and much bigger ones abroad. But the Soil Association lumped it with the recently abandoned plan for a giant dairy farm at Nocton in Lincolnshire and said it was a sign of a “step change” in the industrialisation of British farming. The criticism overshadowed a statement by Compassion In World Farming which expressed concerns over more big indoor rearing but added: “The commitments to meet or exceed RSPCA welfare standards would be a welfare advance.”
Midland Pig Producers says its aim is to reduce pig production costs by 50 per cent.
Richard Lister, of Boroughbridge, North Yorkshire, vice-chairman of the producers’ group in the National Pig Association, commented: “It is a very innovative set of ideas and it is unusual to see anybody proposing to make such a significant investment in the British pig industry in the circumstances we are in. It would be good for the industry to see it go ahead and it is a shame that some people are automatically opposed.”
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