Intensive Poultry Units – Please sign the e-petition!

Brecon & Radnor CPRW has made a petition to the Welsh Assembly Petitions Committee about better regulation of the Intensive Poultry Farming Industry in Wales to protect the environment for future generations.

Many CPRW branches are struggling with a flood of applications for intensive poultry units and this branch has tried everything they can think of to improve LPA decision making at Powys County level – Powys rejected suggestions of better LDP policies.
The branch has used their data about applications to Powys Planning Department for Intensive Poultry Units to show that there have been 99 APPLICATIONS in the last 30 months with ONLY ONE refused. See the interactive map and more information on their website. There are now 7 million chickens in Powys. http://www.brecon-and-radnor-cprw.wales/

Free-range egg developments which make up 72 of the 99 applications are usually too small to require an NRW permit (threshold 40,000 birds) and yet, according to research by NRW to be published soon, they are more environmentally damaging than the larger broiler units.

Ammonia concentrations and nitrogen deposition in the Powys countryside are now surpassing the critical levels for some rare plant species to survive but yet more intensive farms are still being crammed into saturated areas. Steep valleys and high rainfall mean that effluents and manure are running off into the rivers. Chicken farms are being approved regardless of inappropriate sites near sensitive rivers and ancient woodlands, inadequate range-sizes, proximity to neighbours – and cumulative impacts.

The Brecon & Radnor Branch joins with the Montgomery Branch to ask you to PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION

https://www.assembly.wales/en/gethome/e-petitions/Pages/petitiondetail.aspx?PetitionID=1305 and publicize it as widely as you can in your own area to help make this industry safer and more sustainable for all Welsh countryside.