I am writing in connection with the proposed development at Llanshay of an intensive poultry unit (IPU).

Following their defeat in the High Court, Powys Council have to reconsider the application, and I felt that writing to your paper might at least allow some of the public to be aware of the issues.

The proposal is intended to house 110,000 chickens at a time in two steel sheds to produce poultry meat as a “crop”.

Several crops will be produced each year, with the applicants predicting that a total of 880,000 birds will go through the plant per annum.

The units will be staffed by just one or two people.

Meanwhile, the chicken manure from the sheds will be trucked 55 miles away to Shropshire.

When all the evidence points to the need to move away from this kind of American-style industrial-scale production, Powys Council has led the way in allowing these meat factories to proliferate.

They bear no resemblance to the high quality and welfare standards that Welsh agriculture is known for, and worryingly indicate the direction in which agriculture might now go.

As the applicants themselves say, they want to produce meat like this because the future of subsidies for more sustainable production is now in doubt.

If you believe that there has to be a better, more sustainable, way of producing food, I urge you to write to Powys Council to register your objection.

They might even put it on their website.

Supporter of Sustainable Food Knighton

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