A Compassionate World

Are large-scale dairy farms necessarily bad? That was the question I was asked earlier this week when presenting at the New Year Seminar of the Royal Veterinary College in London. It was accompanied by the example of a dairy farm in Malta with only a handful of cows, kept permanently indoors. My answer? That large-scale per se may not be the issue; however, it often indicates a serious underlying threat to animal welfare. Overly large ‘mega-dairies’ indicate a direction of travel that has seriously damaging implications for cow welfare and the future of many dairy farmers themselves.

So, to expand, we have to ask ourselves why anyone would want to take thousands of cows out of fields and house them indoors, as with the proposed Nocton ‘mega-dairy’ in Lincolnshire, UK. How did we get here? The answer lies in a trend toward breeding cows for ever higher milk yield.

Thirty years ago, the average UK dairy cow was producing 5,000 litres of milk a year. No mean feat when you consider that today’s beef cow, milking at a more natural level, will produce about a thousand litres. However, the dairy cow of today is often yielding more like 7,000 litres a year. As production levels increase, the cow’s body begins to struggle to keep up with her over-working udder. If she is to avoid milking off her own back and becoming unwell, she is ‘topped up’ with higher energy concentrates. But it doesn’t stop there. Today’s higher yielding cows are producing an incredible 10,000 litres a year. And it has been suggested that the proposed Nocton cows may achieve even more! At this level, the simple truth is that a cow cannot survive on grass. She cannot physically graze enough to keep up with the demands of her heavy lactation. Her diet is heavily geared toward higher energy forage and concentrates. At this point, it often becomes uneconomic to keep the animals outdoors.
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Following on from our recent blog entitled “Is the UK Government failing on mega-dairies” we now focus our attention on the shortcomings of Clydesdale Bank who have approved the mortgage and debentures for the Nocton proposal – the controversial super dairy project which will see the indoor housing of more than 3,000 cows.

Clydesdale bank has been criticised because it has refused to state what environmental assessments took place before the £13 million land deal was approved.  The original application from Nocton Holdings Ltd was withdrawn after the local council expressed concerns over the environmental impact of the plans. No doubt the intense public pressure was also a factor. We believe that Clydesdale Bank should have taken additional care upon granting the funding for the project to go ahead.

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There is good reason to think that cows belong in fields. Not only is it a common sense conclusion of many, it’s also well supported by scientific evidence. Indeed, ignoring this evidence could well be in breach of key legislation and European obligations relating to animal welfare. This was the subject of a detailed letter from Compassion to Government Minister, Jim Paice MP, this week. And it comes in the wake of the submission of a revised proposal for a 3,700 dairy cow mega-dairy in Lincolnshire, where the cows are likely to be unable to graze for most, if not all of their time.

In the letter, our Chief Policy Advisor, Peter Stevenson argued, “the scientific evidence shows that keeping high yielding cows in systems with no or minimal grazing is detrimental to their welfare, particularly because it presents a high risk of health disorders and to a substantial degree prevents normal behaviour.” Pointing to potential legal issues, Peter’s letter points out that mega-dairies “appear to be unable to fulfil the requirements of the Animal Welfare Act and the Council of Europe Recommendation Concerning Cattle and approval of such systems is arguably incompatible with the Government’s obligations under the Lisbon Treaty”.

The scientific evidence that Peter points to is not some obscure paper written by a single, maverick scientist. Instead, it is the conclusions of Europe’s heavyweight body, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). Last year, EFSA conducted a major review of the science, concluding that “If dairy cows are not kept on pasture for parts of the year, i.e. they are permanently on a zero-grazing system, there is an increased risk of lameness, hoof problems, teat tramp, mastitis, metritis, dystocia, ketosis, retained placenta and some bacterial infections”. In other words, in their “high priority” conclusion, EFSA were concerned that taking cows out of fields puts them at greater risk of a range of health issues that could seriously affect their welfare. EFSA also recommended that “When possible, dairy cows and heifers should be given access to well managed pasture or other suitable outdoor conditions, at least during summer time or dry weather”.

At Compassion, we are working hard to keep cows in fields where they belong, rather than the crowded concrete and sand landscape of the mega-dairy. Your support for our campaign is needed now more than ever as we wrestle with what could be a defining moment in the history of dairy farming and cow welfare. Let’s make sure that cows don’t go the way of other farm animals, disappearing from the land into factory farms. Thank you.