- Location
- Lincolnshire
If the NFU was a truly representative organisation then RT would have been kept in check and would still focus in our case on grain safety. That hasn’t happened as far as can see. It’s just a mutual back slapping club.
Dispatches - Red Tractor
- Thread starter Clive
- Start date
- Location
- Lincolnshire
A bit like all political parties. Say what you really think or rock the boat and you are soon persona non gratis.they made a mistake with mine ……. Think they realised within the first 30 mins of me being there
I got kicked out of their WhatsApp group for daring to say what I thought !
Future NFU leaders and AHDB illuminate are groomed / broken like a horse
Well he never lets the facts get in the way of a good storySlightly different slant than was being portrayed in this thread by A N Other.....
yes - a mind of your own gets you nowhere
the names in the NFU we are all familiar with and often critical of are not the problem imo, it’s the people pulling their strings, they do / say as they are told
Daniel
Member
- Location
- Mildenhall, Suffolk
they made a mistake with mine ……. Think they realised within the first 30 mins of me being there
I got kicked out of their WhatsApp group for daring to say what I thought !
Future NFU leaders and AHDB illuminate are groomed / broken like a horse
What was your crime, suggesting that a tweed jacket and the tie of one's old Ag college shouldn't be essential attire for the duration of the conference?
- Location
- Hammerwich
Who is on this mythical "Executive"? I hear them referred to all the time but never been introduced to one in that way. They seem to decide elections and set policy. I guess I must have met a few of them. Why are their views so far removed from grass roots?
Hindsight
Member
- Location
- Lincolnshire
RT little to do with this. Its all part of a combined media action to remove livestock production from UK. The Guardian article yesterday part of the drip drip and coincidentally same day as the Chanel 4 Dispatches programe. Hardly coincidental in my book. Tory government (Labout for that matter) wants to reduce livestock and then can allow imports from USA etc and argue that is essential to protect UK waters and habitats. George Monbiot will be pleased.
www.theguardian.com
UK farmers may have to cut livestock count to save rivers, says expert
Overload of chicken and dairy cow manure has left some catchments critical, says author of book on issue
www.theguardian.com
primmiemoo
Member
- Location
- Devon
The ulterior motive is to cut out livestock farming. Anything ~ pollution in watercourses, climate change, accusation of welfare issues ~ Anything is used to push the agenda.
The real scandal is that the bog standard consumer values food less than fashion, gadgets, and holidays.
Hindsight
Member
- Location
- Lincolnshire
On the Wye Valley pollution, any issues are surely down to the way the effluent & manure is used, not the fact that there are a lot of big chicken units there?
It’s also a big arable area, who would be using plenty of nutrients anyway. If some runoff is getting into the river then those spreading it need the criticism, not the poultry industry producing it. I suspect any poultry unit directly dribbling any effluent into watercourses would be reported so many times by those campaigners they’d have an EA visit straight away.
They clearly couldn’t find any cases though, so switched to some figures from somewhere in Devon, without mention of even when those figures came from.
Diffuse pollution is a tricky concept to explain and gain farmer acceptance. I have been involved and tried. A solution (possible) to the Wye valley is to stop applying broiler litter to land and burn instead. This was the solution to NVZ regulations the integrated processors have utilised in Lincolnshire / Norfolk.
- Location
- Hammerwich
That's just a coincidence.
- Location
- North Hampshire
Not so much imports but they want people to stop eating meat completely and to start eating highly processed glop . They all have some very large investments in these companies .RT little to do with this. Its all part of a combined media action to remove livestock production from UK. The Guardian article yesterday part of the drip drip and coincidentally same day as the Chanel 4 Dispatches programe. Hardly coincidental in my book. Tory government (Labout for that matter) wants to reduce livestock and then can allow imports from USA etc and argue that is essential to protect UK waters and habitats. George Monbiot will be pleased.
UK farmers may have to cut livestock count to save rivers, says expert
Overload of chicken and dairy cow manure has left some catchments critical, says author of book on issue
- Location
- North Hampshire
Not so thing , people get groomed for the top ....
- Location
- Montgomeryshire
I know it doesn’t fit on here, but maybe, just maybe, he’s someone that has chosen to get involved, rather than sit back and rant on social media about not being represented?
I don’t know the lad, so don’t know if that’s the case or not. It sounds very much like it though.
Maybe we should celebrate it, rather than suggest it’s all a fit up?
- Location
- Montgomeryshire
What’s wrong with applying broiler litter? Surely it’s only over applying, or applying in the wrong conditions, that create an issue, the same as with any other manures?
Plenty of the chicken units round here have been putting too much on, which they get away with for a while, before it starts to cause issues.
davidroberts30
Member
- Location
- pembrokeshire
Perhaps we should shoot people or nuke a few major citys to cull a few humans so we can pollute
- Location
- Lincolnshire
Well I suppose somebody did the sums but how does that add up carbon wise?
From my limited experience of mucking out chickens with a barrow I’d say it wouldn’t burn easily without using a considerable amount of fuel but what do I know? Maybe it’s self sustaining once they get enough heat up?
And what happens to N in the burnt muck? Best not ask about that one.
Sounds like somebody got their knickers in a twist over the NVZ rules and decided to burn it when other options might have better particularly with nitrate at £700 per tonne now. Still needs to be applied and can leach like the best of them.
Last edited:
- Location
- Ledbury, Herefordshire
There will always be peak mortality at three days.I didn’t read that program as undermining RT particularly, although it won’t have helped the brand’s marketing image (such that it is?)
What I took from the program was an attack on ‘mega farms’, not that I saw anything particularly bad on view. The chickens looked healthy and the facilities tidy and in good order (unsurprisingly). They even made a comment at the beginning that antibiotic reduction had been so effective that there were half the number of resistant bacteria found in samples from intensive chickens than in organic ones, but noticed they didn’t dwell on that long.
There will be a few dead ones when they’re young in any system, and I did note they were keen to point out numbers rather than percentages. If there are 250k chickens on one site then even a tiny percentage will make for a big number. I was only surprised they didn’t manage to get an emotive picture of a thousand young chicks in a heap.
They seemed to be trying to make a thing of the guys being trained to humanely dispatch chicks too, but I’d be more concerned if they weren’t.
Intensive poultry production isn’t a job I’d particularly want to be involved in, but I didn’t see anything badly wrong in the units they showed. The system is a result of the demand for cheap food, with efficient factory farming the only way to get the prices so low.
Chicks have about three days worth of nutrition in the (absorbed) yolk. Some, for whatever reason never manage to learn to eat, there are ways of managing this in terms of having lots of available feed (on floor as well as in feeders), but it is always a mortality event.
- Location
- Ledbury, Herefordshire
Even without that - how can they tell the nutrient hasn't come from all the sewage going into the Wye?
- Location
- Lincolnshire
We had 30 free range layers in a hut though.
For me the set up looked it couldn’t really be bettered.
The percentage losses were no worse on that programme as those we experienced small scale with chicks under a heat lamp. I’d say the conditions in that big shed were as good if not better than traditional small scale production. You can’t even let them outdoors even if you wanted to due to avian flu restrictions so the big automatic shed is the only practical way forward other than for niche specialty poultry.
For me the set up looked it couldn’t really be bettered.