Speaking to Food Manufacture following the launch of his book Farmageddon last month, Lymbery said the plans to produce an extra two to four billion litres of milk a year in the UK would result in factory-style farms and significant damage to the countryside.
Dairy production in the UK has declined by about a quarter in the past 30 years, because of a large reduction in herd numbers. To reverse this decline, at the end of last year, the National Farmers Union (NFU), Dairy UK and the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board published a joint draft strategy to increase total UK dairy output by around 30%.
‘Animal welfare problems’
But animal welfare groups fear there will be in an increase in so-called ‘mega dairies’ or that dairy farmers would have to significantly increase their herd sizes to meet targets, which they say would pose animal welfare problems and blight the countryside.
Plans to build a 1,000-cow ‘mega-dairy’ next to a school in Powys, Wales, were recently put on hold pending a High Court judicial hearing in the summer after welfare groups opposed it. The World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) originally challenged the application on the grounds that the building of industrial dairy farms would not be good for the sector, said WSPA UK director Simon Pope.
However, NFU chief dairy adviser Robert Newberry said the UK needed to increase dairy production, “and potentially not in ways seen in the UK” before – such as through larger dairy farms – to ensure a viable dairy sector.
Dairy farmers needed to grow responsibly here to enable more sustainable milk production, said Newberry. “From our research and interaction with the public, it’s [mega dairies] not an issue with the consumer, it’s only an issue with certain pressure groups,” he added.
‘Scaremongering’
Newberry accused animal welfare groups of “scare-mongering” about intensive farming. He claimed they were not presenting a realistic picture of livestock farming in the UK and were wrongly using US systems of intense farming to frighten consumers. He added that high UK standards would prevent welfare from becoming an issue.
In any case, he added, there were other ways to increase output other than through increasing herd sizes. “It could be young farmers looking to start from scratch and it could be an existing farmer looking to add dairy to his land.”
Newberry said: “Some dairy farms in the UK will get bigger, but there are already some farms in the UK with over 1,000 cows and they don’t operate any differently than those with 100.”