Broiler battles: Contested intensive poultry unit developments in a policy void

Highlights

• Proliferating UK intensive poultry developments have triggered local contestation.

• Intensive livestock production is normalised by an agricultural hegemony.

• Increasing externalities, cumulative impacts and uncertainties feed the controversy.

• New publics of objectors have emerged with multiple concerns.

• Planning authorities struggle to handle applications in a policy void.

Abstract

Intensive livestock production in the UK is spatially concentrated in certain counties where its proliferation has triggered increasing controversy over multiple impacts and externalities. Planning authorities have struggled to handle the increasing contestation within a policy void and weakened institutional context, under the influence of the longstanding agricultural hegemony which normalises intensive farming. In the first significant UK study of such planning contestations this paper presents data on the rapid growth of the poultry industry in Herefordshire and Shropshire and how this triggered conflict during the 2010s between the agri-industrial sector and increasing numbers of objectors. Poultry farmer motivations are explored and a typology of farming situations is suggested. The paper reveals how a new public of objectors mobilised to campaign against intensive livestock developments on multiple environmental, economic, health and quality of life grounds. Tracing the power relations within and between the groups of actors reveals multiple uncertainties over impacts, particularly cumulative water and air pollution and a lack of trust in both technocratic planning processes and politicised decision making. The research suggests the planning authorities should address the policy void, acknowledge the uncertainties and take a more open, proactive and strategic approach to locating intensive livestock operations.

Introduction

Intensive livestock farming tends to remain hidden metaphorically and physically. Most people don’t want to know how meat is raised. The moral questions raised tend to be shunted into society’s collective unconsciousness (Evans and Miele, 2012, Jackson, 2010, Safran Foer, 2009, Weis, 2013). Meat production facilities have often been ‘sequestered’ in ‘remote’ areas (Chiles, 2016) partly to conceal the processes so that consumers can continue to avoid thinking about it. It is also in the interests of the intensive livestock industry to keep its presence and impacts low profile. In many countries the avoidance behaviour extends to the policy arena and few planning or environmental policies are established to control where new intensive livestock operations can be sited. For many people it is only when intensive livestock farming arrives on their doorstep, almost literally, in the form of a planning application that they must face the issue. This is when contestation and controversy often emerge as people realise the negative impacts of the industry and decide to fight it.

Numerous communities in the English counties of Herefordshire and Shropshire were faced with such proposals for large intensive poultry units (IPUs) during the 2010s. Lowe and Ward (2009) characterised Herefordshire and Shropshire as ‘deep rural’ and meeting popular perceptions of traditional English countryside. They described the counties as having a sense of tranquillity, with low population densities being relatively remote from large cities, but popular for rural tourism. When multiple planning applications for IPUs were lodged with local authorities there was considerable controversy, both in terms of written objections during the consultation period, but also expressed in the pages of the local (and occasionally national) newspapers:

Hundreds of objections to Market Drayton poultry units (Shropshire Star 19.5.12)

Protesters mass to fight ‘terrible’ chicken farm (Hereford Times 11.10.13)

Industrial chicken sheds given OK despite fears over smell (Hereford Times 15.5.14)

Herefordshire’s idyllic Golden Valley threatened by plans to build huge broiler chicken sheds (The Independent 22.5.15)

Poultry is not a new industry in the area, so how had IPUs become so controversial and contentious? In Shropshire between 2009 and 12 there were four planning applications which attracted a total of 579 written objections. In Herefordshire the controversy emerged a little later. Here eight cases between 2013 and 15 generated 1433 objections. And as more IPUs were approved and built (Fig. 1) the levels of objection and controversy in local media increased.

This article presents the results of research undertaken in Herefordshire and Shropshire between 2016 and 20, exploring the IPU contestations and how they emerged. The research was inspired by theoretical insights from both Actor Network Theory (ANT) and Pragmatism and uses controversy as a starting point to understanding how the contested situation has come to be, with a view to also identifying possibilities for a way forward. The relations within the planning contestations reveal the concerns of the multiple actors and the dynamics within the planning arena and government institutions responsible for guiding decision making.

A brief overview of the UK poultry industry sets the research in context and the literature on IPUs is explored, revealing the scarcity of UK research on planning contestations about intensive livestock farming developments. The research methods are outlined, before the planning application data is presented. The article then explores the motivations behind farmers’ decisions to develop IPUs and suggests a typology of IPU farming situations found in this part of the UK. The objectors’ perspectives and their concerns about IPUs are discussed. ANT foregrounds controversy and uncertainties within situations and urges that attention be paid to multiple voices and entangled power relations. The description of the polarised networks of relations amongst the actors within the planning arena reveals how the contested situation has emerged and the consequences of allowing a policy void to persist despite a proliferation of intensive farming developments. A Pragmatic lens adds a practical, future-oriented sensibility drawing attention to what actions might provide solutions to imbalanced power relations.