Mega-Farms

RE: Mega-Farms

Neil Wheadon — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 23:02:02 GMT

Trawling my memory now, but AHVLA as they were, often assigned a number of farms running under the same management under the same holding number, therefore they look huge. In fact there was an effort to reduce the number of holding numbers as this made licensing and internal movements a little easier.

So mega farms with 800 cattle all running together don't actually exist. In reality they are a series of individual units overseen by a single management structure

Neil

RE: Mega-Farms

Iain Richards — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 20:43:52 GMT

I haven't dealt with really massive dairy units, the biggest being about 300 milking head. I've seen some shocking farms and some excellent ones, ones you could eat off the parlour floor. However, size isn't the issue. Staffing and the attitude of the staff is. If you take out the aesthetic argument (which is human emotion) there is no reason that a large, completely enclosed dairy barn should result in worse welfare than a free range unit. Logically the opposite applies as the unit is secure from extremes of weather and disease, nutrition can be more tightly controlled, observation is better. The risk to climate change can be reduced with anaerobic digesters providing methane for power and any gases given off by the cattle can be controlled before being released.

I can give you lots of reasons why a well run unit can be excellent. Don't like them though!

RE: Mega-Farms

Nick Taylor — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 12:27:34 GMT

Maybe you could share some evidence with us? I tend to agree with Martin but am happy to be shown otherwise.....

RE: Mega-Farms

Phil Hyde — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 11:18:29 GMT

[quote user="Martin Atkinson"]

Sorry Phil but while the public want cheap food the economy of scale will trump everything else. The consumer is king. At risk of being at the mercy of one star man, I would say that bigger farms are likely to be run more professionally and therefore have proportionally less problems than the traditional family run enterprise.

[/quote] Which is why I asked the question. I would love to say that they are better than family run farms and quality of life is better for the animals if the evidence points that way. But does it? My suspicion is that it does not, but I am more than willing to change my mind.

RE: Mega-Farms

Martin Atkinson — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 10:49:36 GMT