Farmers: Destroying the Environment While Playing the Victim

The Guardian reports that East Anglia’s industrial farms have been caught breaching environmental regulations over 700 times in seven years. That’s twice a week, every week. Yet, just days ago, farmers were clogging up roads in protest - not over their own destruction of land, air, and water, but because they don’t want to pay their fair share in tax.  

700 Breaches and Counting

Freedom of Information (FoI) data reveals that intensive pig and poultry farms in Norfolk and Suffolk have violated environmental laws at least 776 times since 2017. That includes:  

- Contaminating waterways with slurry

- Dumping dead animals outside instead of sealing them in containers  

- Packing in more animals than legally allowed

- Polluting the air with unbearable stench  

Some of the biggest offenders? Cranswick plc, Crown Chicken Ltd, and Wayland Farms Ltd, all pushing for even bigger industrial farming operations despite their track record of pollution and non-compliance.  

Now, Cranswick wants permission to expand a farm in Methwold into a mega-factory farm producing millions of chickens and tens of thousands of pigs annually. Residents and campaigners are furious. They know the proposal means even more pollution, more emissions, and more destruction - but will local councils actually listen?  

The Hypocrisy of Farmer Protests

Meanwhile, these same farmers - some of the biggest polluters in the country - just staged a mass protest against tax reform.  

Hundreds of tractors crawled along the A14 at 20mph, bringing traffic to a standstill. Their outrage? The government wants to end their decades-long exemption from inheritance tax, meaning wealthy landowners will finally have to contribute like everyone else.  

They cried about their "family farms" - the same "family farms" that pump waste into rivers, ignore regulations, and treat animals like machines. One farmer sobbed about possibly losing 20% of his farm. But what about the rivers lost to toxic run-off? The wildlife poisoned by ammonia emissions? The people forced to live next to these stinking, polluted sites?  

Factory Farming: A Disaster in Every Way

Farming in the UK isn’t about food security or tradition - it’s industrialised animal exploitation on a mass scale, with massive consequences:  

- Climate impact – The proposed Methwold mega-farm alone could pump out 120,000 tonnes of CO₂ annually, wrecking national climate targets.  

- Biodiversity loss – Overuse of land, pollution, and waste dumping devastates ecosystems. 

- Public health risks – Intensive farming breeds disease and contaminates water supplies.  

Yet, instead of addressing their own industry’s devastation, farmers play the victim and demand more tax payer handouts.  

The Bottom Line

The farming industry in East Anglia has violated environmental laws hundreds of times - yet when asked to pay tax like everyone else, they block roads in protest.  

No sympathy. If they can afford endless expansion, they can afford to clean up their mess.