Unfortunately, dairy farms in some areas of new Zealand, have become dairy factories. Very large herds of cows, on huge farms borne out of the amalgamations of many smaller farms. Make no mistake these ‘factories’ are now the province of big corporations, many overseas owned or have a large overseas ownership content.
Again, unfortunately, these factory farms are run on big business type principles where profit over-rides all other considerations. Where factory farm owners can skirt or ignore existing legislation protecting the environment, they do – where they can oppose legislation to make them clean up their act they do – all in the name of increased profit.
Now the immediate past Chairman of Federated Farmers, the biggest and strongest farmers association in NZ has described trout as the major contributor to declining freshwater quality. There in his own words is the biggest indictment of the true self-serving nature of factory farming.
Let there be no mistake, dairy factory farming is without doubt the biggest and too often the only threat to the waterways near where they exist.
There is an upside to these words by this rather silly man – media uptake is rising rapidly and it is all pretty much negative as far as factory farming is concerned. If Lachlan McKenzie thought for one moment he could divert attention away from factory farming as a destructive force in NZ ecology it got it very wrong – now even more attention is being focused on the bad practices and soon factory farmers will be faced with the true costs of being clean and green.
Radio New Zealand : News : National : Trout blamed for waterway damage
Comments on this entry are closed.