Plans to open first massive intensive dairy farm in UK

[AnnieLobeseder]

Plans to open first massive intensive dairy farm in UK.

Personally, I can see this as being the thing that finally tips me into veganism.

Other views?

horrific. They had an article on sat about how the government has gone back on all animal reforms it was going to do too. Makes me so sad

Disgusting.

And how on earth are ordinary farmers, who actually care about their livestock, going to compete?

Since there was such a wonderful movement last year (this year) away from battery chickens, with lots of supermarkets now only stocking free-range eggs, I wonder if the same will happen to milk?

If this farm goes ahead, I will certainly be writing to Sainsbury's to let them know I won't buy their milk unless it's not intensively farmed.

But the problem is other dairy products - cheese, yoghurt... you can bet all the big manufacturers will go for the cheaper milk. So I guess I'll have to be very careful where my dairy comes from, or switch to soya (but I need cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeese!)

Dairy farmers are already paid a pittance, and this will only drive milk prices down further.

Horrible, horrible on so many levels.

What other animal welfare reforms are being backed down on?

oh god, i'm going to have to switch to organic milk and cut back on the amount i consume to make it affordable.

"And how on earth are ordinary farmers, who actually care about their livestock, going to compete?"

Well it's debatable how well they're doing anyway.

But the answer to their troubles isn't to not open things like this mega farm and it's very wrong to blame them for creating the problem, in fact it's not only wrong it's cowardly as the fault is ours.

The "blame" lies with us the consumer. As a rule we all relentlessly hunt out the cheapest deals and the industry then struggles to find corners to cut to give us that extra penny off.

If we all said that we'd pay a bit more for our milk and refused to buy milk from mega farms then they'd all go away. And that's without one single piece of "animal reform" or other Government interference. The milk industry isn't stupid or deliberately cruel, if we made clear that we'd only pay for decent well produced milk they'd fall over themselves to get it to us.

But no, rather than spend more on our milk we'll buy the cheapest pint that we can and then blame the dairies for giving us what we want.

We could quite literally change all of this tomorrow. Commit to no longer buying 45p pints of milk, commit to paying extra, commit to buying from farms where the cows are monitored and treated well.

Will we change it?

No probably not.

It's easier to complain about the lack of Government action while we head for the cheap milk section of the supermarket.

To be honest, I don't have any idea what a pint of milk costs. It's something I need, so I buy it. I buy Sainsbury's own brand organic, which hopefully means it won't be coming from an intensive farm. But I'd happily pay more for ethically produced milk. I've been doing the same with eggs for years.

People shop from supermarkets. It's simply not convenient to shop all over the place these days when we're all so busy. And if all the supermarkets got together to increase the price of milk, and also increase animal welfare standards by doing so, we'd have no choice but to go along with it.

The supermarkets seem to have managed to switch to free range eggs without causing consumer outrage, and without prices skyrocketing. So I would imagine they can manage to do the same with milk.

I agree that it needs to come from the consumer too - the supermarkets are out to make a profit, not make animals happy. But if enough of us demanded ethical milk from our supermarkets, they'd have to provide it.

I would of thought that milk is like petrol?

You need it and will buy it regardless though it may make you use the car less.

Mr Supermarket would prefer you to buy it from them and this is the result to make it as cheap as possible.

I don't know why there can't be a standard 'fair trade' on milk and other farmer essentials, so that we know that the farmer is getting a fair deal.

I buy our milk (organic) from the milkman.

The problem here is not the farmer.

The farm is complying with minimum welfare standards and he is producing milk at lowest possible cost within those standards. That is the nature of commodity food production. Those with lowest cost win the competitive battle. Eventually higher cost producers are forced out of the industry and only te most efficient survive.

Consumers should be campaigning to raise the minimum UK welfare standards and prevent imports of food produced to lower welfare standards than in the UK. Not bashing this farmer who is only doing his job within the constraints of the regulatory framework.

I would suspect the quality of milk produced in such a way, it reminds me of the "swill milk" scandals. I already buy organic milk as it is proven to have more protein.

The problem is not with the consumer either. It is nonsense to think that we could or should choose to pay more for our milk, and that the extra money would somehow find its way to the primary producer and be used to improve animal welfare.

The problem is with the land in the UK being too expensive, so farmers pay too much rent/interest to make farming worthwhile. In the long run, that could be dealt with through massive tax on the sale of agricultural land.

I am not concerned about this super dairy - it is so high profile, that it will be under constant pressure to show that animal welfare standards are high. I do doubt the model is a sustainable one, given the likelihood of increases in feed prices.

I hate the way the Guardian compares the model with a Hare Krishna "farm" where all the animals have names, there are only 11 cows producing milk and a no-kill policy. That is very nice, but it has nothing to do with commercial milk production.

I love the idea of this alternative method of milk production
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article581764.ece
where the cows themselves choose when to come in from the fields to be milked

(Sorry for disjointed post! Looking after a toddler while MNing)

There was something in the paper at the weekend comparing mass-produced milk to that produced by the cows cared for by Hare Krishna farmers. Everyone could tell the difference just by looking at it; thicker, creamier etc. And the taste was far superior in that it tasted very much like milk, and the mass-produced milk tasted like a watered down version.

I can't imagine how poor the quality of milk produced in one of those huge 'dairies' would be. Barely worth drinking I would think.

two problems with that

• the tasters were biased, they knew what they were drinking

• the milk from different breeds of cow does taste different, it is not feasible to use shorthorns to produce dairy on a commercial scale, but if you are after creamy milk, you can by milk produced from jersey cows in most big supermarkets

buy

it would be interesting to compare the milk of ordinary friesan cows in different production systems, this may already have been done

I found a news story dated today saying the farmer has decided to cut cow numbers in half.

Sadly, people will buy it though - no matter how bad it is. The amount of people I see buying battery eggs honestly beggars belief. No matter how poor I have been I would never buy them (mind you for a very long time I had chickens of my own.

I only ever buy organic milk, partially because I feel the quality is better. I feel very strongly about the quality of food i give my children - I am not massively mad about this, they have crisps and sweets sometimes but I do try to make everything myself like cakes and biccies.

The notion of intensively farming milk on this scale is frankly quite alarming but a market-driven reaction to us all wanting to have our food produced very cheaply.

I will not be buying.

Is there any evidence at all that the milk would be a poorer quality?

"if all the supermarkets got together to increase the price of milk, and also increase animal welfare standards by doing so, we'd have no choice but to go along with it."

But one Supermarket would continue to offer the cheap milk and people would go there to get it.

"The supermarkets seem to have managed to switch to free range eggs without causing consumer outrage"

In the end with free range eggs the consumer did put their weight against battery farmed eggs and it became worthwhile, and profitable, for the supermarkets to almost compete to be the first go go free range.

"if enough of us demanded ethical milk from our supermarkets, they'd have to provide it."

Exactly my point, this is all down to the consumer.

"It is nonsense to think that we could or should choose to pay more for our milk, and that the extra money would somehow find its way to the primary producer and be used to improve animal welfare."

It's not nonsense at all. If consumers put their foot down and made clear that they would only buy "free range" equivalent milk, which would cost more to produce, then suddenly you'd see the supermarkets falling over themselves to produce it.

It's not about paying more as such, it's about choosing the product from the shelve that has the values we want to support rather than the one with the lowest price. It's about refusing to buy the cheap milk. It's about refusing to shop in supermarkets that don't offer a "free range" type of milk.

"That is very nice, but it has nothing to do with commercial milk production."

But that Hare Krishna type farm is going into commercial milk production, so it has everything to do with commercial milk production.

It shows giving cows that sort of lifestyle and care is expensive, £3 a litre.

What will be a good question is will the people who might approve of cows being looked after like that be willing to pay for it?

"The notion of intensively farming milk on this scale is frankly quite alarming but a market-driven reaction to us all wanting to have our food produced very cheaply."

I agree completely. And it's not just us wanting food cheaply but us also not being willing to put any extra effort into sourcing our food and no matter what noises we might make about animal rights routinely putting them aside to buy the cheap stuff.

We'd rather just pass the buck and blame the Government or the food industry.

Trying to buy Free Range Eggs in Tesco is a game - there are more boxes with:-

'these eggs are layed by caged birds' than free range etc

and don't get me started on Danish Bacon.......

"But that Hare Krishna type farm is going into commercial milk production, so it has everything to do with commercial milk production."

Hmmmm. How many lovingly-tended dairy shorthorns would it take to supply the same amount of milk as the UK's friesans currently produce?

That kind of operation is negligible. It is like me buying a pet pot bellied pig, and comparing their care to that of the commercial pig farms.

The term 'free range' eggs is a million miles away from what most people imagine.

A large scale egg producer is trying to get permission to build a 'free range' egg production unit near my parents' house.

As I understand it, the unit is a giant shed containng 15 - 20 thousand birds with 'bob holes' that allow the hens to go outside. The fenced area they can go on outside is large enough to allow them 1 square metre each to stand on and flap their wings. The shed has a pit underneath to collect droppings that is emptied twice per year. The ground outside is typically soaked in droppings. The birds live entirely on commercial chicken feed and regular doses of antibiotics.

This is comletely legal but is is what you imagine free range means? I doubt it, yet if you bought free range eggs from a supermarket this may be what you bought.

BeenBeta - exactly - free range doesn't mean a happy existence scratching around in the dirt until they are killed.

There is still the issue of what all free range farms do with males chicks.

Not all milk is the same:-

The results of independent research carried out by Dr Kathryn Ellis at the Universities of Liverpool and Glasgow from 2002 to 2005 looked into the compositional differences between organic and non-organic milk. The results, published in the Journal of Dairy Science in 2006 , showed that organic milk is on average 68% higher in total Omega-3 than non-organic milk. Following this research, 11 independent scientists wrote to the Food Standards Agency in the UK, and the Agency now acknowledges that organic milk contains more Omega 3 essential fatty acid than non-organic milk.

Organically reared cows, which eat high levels of fresh grass, clover pasture and grass-clover silage, produced milk which was on average 50% higher in Vitamin E (alpha tocopherol), 75% higher in beta carotene (which our bodies convert to Vitamin A) and two to three times higher in the antioxidants lutein and zeaxanthine than non-organic milk.

"That kind of operation is negligible. It is like me buying a pet pot bellied pig, and comparing their care to that of the commercial pig farms."

I took "commercial milk production" to mean literally what it means, the production of milk for sale and profit, and the Hare Krishna type operation is exactly that.

The current operation might be negligible but that doesn't mean that it's not commercial.

I presume that you actually meant it as meaning mass produced milk.

Would a Hare Krisha type operation be able to provide as much milk as the current low price high volume mass producers?

Not sure... If everyone was willing to pay that much money and refused to settle for anything less something close to it could be achievable. Certainly something offering the cows a much better life than they get at the moment would happen if consumers said "we want our cows treated like this and won't buy any milk that comes from lesser treated animals".

If it's profitable then someone will do it.

Right now most people want cheap rather than ethical milk and that's where the mass producers are.