Chicken, ants, maggots and earthships

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Brands behaving badly

Avara Foods: Chicken Little, no chicken a lot.

Courtesy of Poultry News

How about you reduce the number of chickens which are grown in the River Wye’s catchment area, scientists asked Avara Foods?

No, replied John Reed, Avara’s agricultural director.

There’s a continued demand for the meat. There is no signal out there that says stop and cut back. We’re serving the consumer. If we didn’t produce chicken meat here, it would be imported.

The reason for the concern is the River Wye, which runs between mid-Wales and the Seven estuary is choking up with algal blooms. They’re caused in part, by over saturated phosphorus in the land which leaches into the river.

The phosphorus comes from the chicken shit, which is mucked out of those intensive farms and dumped back on the land. Avara is responsible for 16 of the 20 million birds reared in the river’s catchment area every year and a lead supplier to Tesco’s.

Spreading the shit on the farm’s land costs next to nothing. Having to do something with it, apart from continually dumping, would squeeze margins…