Industrial scale farms are increasingly the way Britain gets its food, but these facilities are cruel and bad for our health. Millions of animals are confined to small restrictive spaces and forced to live a punishingly unnatural existence. The spillover of this merciless regime creates health hazards for us all. In one corner of Norfolk, residents, campaigners and councillors came together to resist the efforts of Cranswick Plc to create a megafarm on their doorstep. This is their story.
Draw a line from North Yorkshire to Suffolk. That stretch of land, so easily traced by pencil, is in fact a corridor of incarceration, with a staggering 90 million living beings forcibly held in servitude. They exist in the most hazardous conditions – locked up in cramped, dark sheds, denied their most basic rights during their unnaturally short lives. All will be killed before they reach adulthood. All will be physically abused. Some will be castrated and have their teeth clipped while fully conscious. Their only way out of this living hell will be execution. And when they die, others will be brought here, and the wretched process will repeat itself. This landscape is dripping with physical torture and emotional cruelty, and this week, thanks to a group of campaigners and advocates, we got a glimpse into the workings of these penal facilities. What we learnt was disturbing and alarming.
The Planning Application
In April 2022, Wayland Farms Ltd and Crown Chicken Limited, both part of Cranswick Plc., one of Britain’s largest food producers, submitted two planning applications to the borough council of King’s Lynn and West Norfolk. They applied to redevelop a site, situated between the villages of Feltwell and Methwold, which is currently used for so-called pig farming, and licensed to hold a maximum of 29,000 pigs at any one time.
Wayland’s application proposed the demolition of 22 existing buildings and the construction of 14 ‘rearing’ units that would hold 14,000 pigs. Crown Chicken had bigger ambitions – they applied to build four worker dwellings and 20 poultry sheds, which would hold around 800,000 chickens at any one time. Pigs are taken to slaughter when they are between 20 to 30 weeks old (a pig’s natural life span is 15-20 years), chickens are killed when they are about 45 days old (a chicken’s natural life span is 10-15 years), so the new facility would have an annual throughput of some 48,000 pigs and almost 7 million chickens. The jump in the number of captive animals would classify the proposed facility a megafarm.
The Rise of the Mega Farm
“One thing is clear: I do not want to see, and we will not have, US-style farming in this country.” – Michael Gove The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, July 20th 2017.
Immediately after Brexit, there was concern that Britain’s animal welfare and environmental standards would be lowered. Rules and regulations, however well-meaning, were seen as bad, an infringement on one’s liberty. Michael Gove, Secretary of State at the time, was asked for re-assurances during a 2017 parliamentary debate. A natural orator with little regard for accuracy, Gove’s truthfulness was frequently in doubt, and even questioned by a fellow cabinet colleague, then Chancellor Philip Hammond.
Gove’s assurances on British farming were, unsurprisingly, to prove faulty. In 2017 the UK operated 800 US-style megafarms – where large numbers of animals are restricted to small, densely populated indoor spaces. By 2022 that number had jumped to just over 1,000 and by 2024 it was 1,800. (The UK environmental agency defines these environments as places that hold over 40,000 chickens, 2,000 pigs or 750 sows. Dairy and beef cattle farms are not regulated in the same way and there’s no formal definition of what constitutes an intensive cattle farm).
Some 85%, or roughly 1 billion animals, of all UK farmed animals are held in factory farms. According to Eat Fair this includes 95% of all UK chickens and pigs. Chickens are restricted to a space roughly the size of an A4 sheet of paper while they are grown to four times their natural body weight. Before reaching seven days old, they will have their beaks trimmed (sometimes called debeaking), resulting in chronic pain and sensory deprivation, and making eating and preening difficult. Piglets usually no more than four days old will be castrated, have their tails cut off and their ‘needle’ teeth clipped – all without pain relief.
The planning applications before King’s Lynn and West Norfolk council were not just about the construction of sheds and workers’ dwellings on the Feltwell-Methwold site – they were about building a megafarm to enslave and lock up 7 million animals annually in an environment designed to cause them physical and psychological damage in the name of profit. But as we learnt during the April 3rd planning hearing, the proposal was also about harming you and me.
12,000 Objections
Have you ever heard the sound of suffering?
Ten seconds of life in a factory farm.
Video from World Animal Protection
The community quickly mobilised, with 2,200 individual objections posted on the council’s planning portal:
- From Methwold IP26 4PS: Cranswick claim animal welfare is better served by these modern industrial developments than it is by older intensive indoor pig and poultry farms. This fails to recognise that cramming thousands of poultry and pigs into sheds in such a vast factory farm is far from a humane way of treating animals.
- From Thetford IP26 4RG: Emissions of particulate matter and ammonia from industrial farms are linked to respiratory conditions such as asthma, bronchitis, and other lung diseases. Large-scale livestock farming increases the likelihood of zoonotic disease outbreaks, such as swine flu or avian flu, due to the sheer density of animals in one location.
- From Thetford IP26 4RG: The density of animals on the farm could increase the likelihood of disease outbreaks, including bird flu or swine fever, both of which pose a risk to human health and the local animal population. Moreover, the close confinement of animals fosters the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which could contribute to a public health crisis.
- From Morpeth NE65 9QB: I am writing to object in the strongest terms to this retrograde, inhumane and environmentally damaging planning application. Intensive, agro-industry such as this demands the highest output at the lowest cost; cheap meat for humans while the animals ‘farmed’ and the local environment pay the true price while nature is pushed beyond it limits.
Others began a petition, which closed with 42,000 signatures, while some reached out to NGOs who went onto formerly oppose the application including WWF, Sustain, the RSPB, The Animal Advocacy Project, Animal Defenders International, Animal Justice Project, Animal Law Foundation, PETA, Humane Being UK, and Scrap Factory Farming.
By last Thursday, all parish councils neighbouring the Feltwell-Methwold site objected to the planning proposal. Curiously, the National Environmental agency didn’t, although it did offer some loose recommendations including referring to the agency’s web pages for guidance on ground water and waste, and suggesting the applicants seek advice from the local authority on the management of risks to human health. The last comment intrigued me.
Scrap Megafarms
“So, if I die of avian flu I can come back and reopen the case.” – Jane Tredgett, Co-founder of Scrap Factory Farming.
I speak with Jane the day before the planning hearing. It’s sunny and light outside, and a fresh breeze rolls in through an open door. I look out and see openness, and sky and horizon and I am thankful I am not in a megafarm – not in a dim shed where the air is motionless and my horizon is only a few metres away, where I am contained in a space barely larger than me, and my damaged body goes untreated.
Jane knows about megafarms more than most. A former RSPCA Trustee, founder of Humane Being, and co-founder of Scrap Factory Farming, Jane was a co-claimant in the world’s first legal challenge against a government to end factory farming. The case cited ‘animal suffering, climate chaos, degradation of the planet, the dangers of antibiotic resistance, and pandemic risk’ as reasons for the UK government to end the practice of intense farming. Human rights lawyer Michael Mansfield KC laid out the argument that the government had a duty to protect human health, that mega farms represented heightened risks, and that the government had an obligation to act. The case was heard at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in July 2022.
“We took it to the European Court of Human Rights, and we didn’t succeed because they said none of us were directly impacted by a factory [mega] farm. So, if I die of avian flu I can come back and reopen the case. It was disappointing but somebody had to be the first to take a legal challenge and that’s what we did.”
The 2022 decision hasn’t deterred Jane.
“Scrap Factory Farming is focused on the intensive farms, the farms where animals are kept in huge numbers in cramped and confined conditions, be that nets if they’re fish, or sheds if they’re land animals.”
Jane explains Scrap is an acronym:
- Suffering – of the sentient and social animals who are bred on an industrial scale to be yield machines, and who are in turn cruelly confined and violently abused.
- Climate – the emissions and pollutants discharged from farmed animals.
- Ravaging – the destruction of land to supply the megafarms’ animal feed.
- Antibiotics – the excessive and irresponsible use of antibiotics in megafarming, resulting in antibiotic resistant bacteria.
- Pandemics and disease – up to 75% of new or emerging infectious diseases are thought to be zoonotic in origin. (A zoonosis is an infectious disease that has jumped from a non-human animal to humans).
“We don’t support any animal farming, but we want to get rid of megafarms first as they are the most horrific and account for most of the animals”.
I have seen the cruelty and brutality of intensive animal agriculture. It is something that takes you over, and you forever lose part of who you are, who you were. It’s an involuntary and slow decaying.
Antibiotics, Pandemics and Zoonoses
“So, the animals are put in these unnatural conditions which create all sorts of health hazards and they become highly stressed and anxious. To sustain them, the farms pump them full of antibiotics. The conditions of captivity create the need for the antibiotics. There are some genuinely sick animals, but the vast majority of those antibiotics are being given because the farming system is so perverted. In the UK, roughly 30% of all antibiotics are given to farm animals. Globally it’s 70%”.
The problem with such widespread use of antibiotics is that we are creating bacteria which over time develop the ability to continue to grow, even when they are exposed to antimicrobial medicines that are meant to kill them or limit their growth. The Natural Resources Defence Council estimates these antibiotic resistant ‘superbugs’ are responsible for at least 35,000 deaths in the US and 1.3 million fatalities globally. The 2016 O’Neill report commissioned by the UK government predicted global fatalities could reach 10 million in the next two decades, equalling the number of worldwide cancer deaths.
The indiscriminate use of antibiotics in megafarms means there is a greater chance of resistant superbugs reaching humans – for farm workers it could be through direct contact with infected animals, while for the rest of us it could be through meat, or via manure sprayed on land which then affects crops or runs off into waterways.
Recent drone footage shot in the US Midwest by Mercy for Animals captured a manure lagoon.
“Unsurprisingly, keeping faeces in giant lagoons—and spraying it in the air—has disastrous consequences for the environment and surrounding communities. It can wash into local waterways, poisoning fish and contaminating rivers with nitrogen and phosphorus” said a Mercy for Animals spokesperson.
Before Jane and I end our conversation, she highlights the pandemic risk megafarms represent.
Zoonoses are infectious diseases which move from animal to human. Prior to COVID, it was estimated that zoonoses were responsible for around one billion illnesses globally every year, and 75% of new human pathogens detected in the last three decades including swine flu and avian influenza, have originated in non-human animals.
The link between Zoonoses and megafarms is attracting attention. In November 2021, the London School of Economics was commissioned by the European Parliament to undertake a study to find the ‘potential role of livestock production in facilitating the emergence and transmission of novel zoonoses.’ The report concluded that ‘livestock frequently acts as intermediary hosts’ for zoonotic pathogens, facilitating their transmission from animal to human, and that intensification of factory farming was a driver of this.
Today We Celebrate:
On the afternoon of Thursday April 3rd, the council formally rejected the two applications to build a megafarm on the Feltwell-Methwold site. Jane took to Instagram:
Today, the Borough Council of King’s Lynn and West Norfolk made the right decision and REJECTED the planning application for what would have been the largest mega factory farm in Europe.
This is a HUGE victory – for the animals, for the planet, for local communities, and for everyone who stood up and said “no” to industrial-scale cruelty, pollution, and harm.
Over the past two years, the resistance to this proposal has been immense.
We in the Scrap Factory Farming team are so proud to have stood alongside local residents, groups and other organisations in this fight.
The movement is growing. And we’re not stopping here.
Like Jane’s 2022 court case, this was a David versus Goliath story, and today, thankfully David won.
This article is in memory of Willy de Houelle, who died on April 3rd. The four-year-old horse was ridden to his death, becoming the Grand National’s 66th victim since 2000. More than 3,000 horses have been killed at National Hunt or ‘jump’ races since 2001 – roughly one death every three days.
— ©2025 Sul Nowroz – Real Media staff writer
