A tale of two herds | World news | The Guardian: The fight in Nocton against the UK's biggest yet factory farm battery dairy goes on.
The developer, Peter Willes, has caused concern because of two previous convictions Willes received at other farms he owns. In 2008 he was fined for polluting a stream in north Devon after a case was brought by the Environment Agency, and in 2005 he had a 12-month conditional discharge after pleading guilty to having four types of antibiotics for cows which are illegal in the UK.
Conservative MP and environmental campaigner Zac Goldsmith has called the proposals "squalid" and warned the project would "take farming to a new low".
The 8,000 cows will be divided into mini-herds of 450 cows, will be kept in large barns with 8.3 sq metres of concrete and sand for each animal – less than five times the space taken up by an average Holstein-Friesian dairy cow, or, relative to their sizes, roughly equivalent to a human in a standard toilet cubicle.
The 8,000 cows are expected to each produce 33 litres a day for 10 months a year. The current national average is 28 litres a day, which is itself nearly double what it was 30 years ago.
"It is highly likely that the milk from these high yeilding cows will be a nutritional shadow compared with what is detailed in mccance and widdowson, the nutritionist's bible on nutrient levels in food.
It would be very interesting to look at the actual nutrient levels of this watery bland battery farmed milk compared to a naturally fed organic cow" says Yvonne Bishop-Weston, new forest and London nutritionist
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