Opinion

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Farming

Tuesday 21 August 2007

So Dutch pig farmers are planning to build ever-bigger pig farms in an effort to keep their heads above water because of cheaper pork production elsewhere.

Environmental organisation Milieudefensie is monitoring developments because the government bizarrely does not have any overview of where these new industrial complexes will be built or how many are in the offing.

Locals are worried, not about the ethics of mass cheap meat production, but about the smell, the manure and the noise of hundreds of lorries carting pigs off to the slaughterhouse.

Production on such a scale has nothing to do with traditional farming. So why not move these pork factories from the countryside to the industrial estates where they belong?

Farming groups are apparently opposed to the idea because it would break the link between farms and the countryside. As if there is any connection between an enormous steel shed packed with pigs who walk on metal grills and a happy hog snuffling around between the apple trees!

If we accept factory farming on an industrial scale, then why not treat it as a proper industry? You would not get permission to build a massive chemical works in the middle of rural Holland. So why should you get permission to produce pork?

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