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About the Current Applications

The planned farms will release as much as 1.7 million litres of diluted effluent onto the land per day. This is equivalent to a city of 270,000 people.

Cornelis Zeestraten, one of the applicants and director of Union Station Dairies Ltd, has one of the worst compliance records in Southland. His company was fined $25,000 in August 2009 for unlawfully discharging effluent to land, with fines for similar offences in 2004 and 2007. Another company, Southern Friesians, was served with at least two abatement notices and an infringement notice while Mr Zeestraten was a director. (1)

Cow stalls violate one of the five freedoms of animal welfare defined by the National Animal Welfare Advisory Council Code of Practice: "Freedom to express normal behaviour". Despite allowing some freedom of movement, scientific research shows that stalls (including "free stalls") do impair the natural behaviour of cows.

About Stall Farms in General

Concentrating large numbers of animals in factory farms is a major contribution to global environmental degradation, through the need to grow feed, pollution of water, soil and air by agrochemicals and manure waste, and use of limited resources (10).

High stock density requires increased use of antibiotics and pesticides to mitigate the spread of disease and pestilence exacerbated by these crowded living conditions (2). Pesticides eventually accumulate in consumers' bodies which can cause health problems (3,4,5)

Farms on which animals are intensively reared can cause adverse health reactions in farm workers (6).

It takes 19,737 litres of water to produce 450g of beef (7).

A dairy farm with 2,500 cows can produce as much waste as a city of 411,000 people (8).

Environmental impacts of factory farming can include: (9)

Deforestation for animal feed production
Unsustainable pressure on land for production of high protein/high energy animal feed
Pesticide, herbicide and fertiliser manufacture and use for feed production
Unsustainable use of water for feed-crops, including groundwater extraction
Pollution of soil, water and air by nitrogen and phosphorus from fertiliser used for feed-crops and from manure
Land degradation (reduced fertility, soil compaction, increased salinity, desertification)
Loss of biodiversity due to eutrophication, acidification, pesticides and herbicides
Worldwide reduction of genetic diversity of livestock and loss of traditional breeds
Species extinctions due to livestock-related habitat destruction (especially feed-cropping)

1 Source: The Timaru Herald
2. "Factory farming," Encyclopedia Britannica, 2007
3. Miller GT (2004), Sustaining the Earth, 6th edition. Thompson Learning, Inc. Pacific Grove, California. Chapter 9, Pages 211-216.
4. Sustainable Table article Pesticides
5. Pesticides In the Environment. Pesticide fact sheets and tutorial, module 6. cornell.edu. Retrieved on September 19, 2007.
6. U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
7. University of California (thanks Marion Lloyd)
8. "Food Safety Consequences of Factory Farms". Food & Water Watch. March, 2007
9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_farming
10. Compassion in World Farming - Environment & sustainability