This is so beautifully written and so sad. I vividly remember canoeing on the wye as a kid. It’s so absolutely horrifying that cheap chicken production has been allowed to proliferate in this way when only a few years ago it looked like free range was the mainstream choice. And cheap chicken is EVERYWHERE. This should not be the price paid for such a cruel, pointless product, crammed with hormones that will do god knows what to the people eating it. petition signed, post shared x
I too had a small stream at the bottom of my childhood garden, with a water meadow opposite, the cows tramped the mud as they came down to the stream and swifts and swallows swooped taking it for their nests. I fished there catching sticklebacks and minnows with my jam jar. Years later buildings of bypass, houses, industrial sheds on farm land up stream were all supposed to store the run off created. This run off is now intense, it's faster, it's gouged the stream making it well over a meter wider and deeper in places. The first rains in summer run a thick grey from tyre waste then the river runs brown as in your photos. It's so fast it doesn't have time to gently flood and linger for a day or two and has very little life in it. Our issue is not horrendous chicken farms ours is lack of planning in how to store and use "brown water" in local development. I imagine this happens upstream of the Wye's chicken farms compounding the problem.
Absolutely I imagine it does, as it happens all across the country as we “develop” more and more land with no thought to the natural processes and systems that are being disrupted.
Farming like this should actually be illegal. Will keep sharing the petition xx
Thank you
This is so beautifully written and so sad. I vividly remember canoeing on the wye as a kid. It’s so absolutely horrifying that cheap chicken production has been allowed to proliferate in this way when only a few years ago it looked like free range was the mainstream choice. And cheap chicken is EVERYWHERE. This should not be the price paid for such a cruel, pointless product, crammed with hormones that will do god knows what to the people eating it. petition signed, post shared x
Thank you Alex. Xx
I too had a small stream at the bottom of my childhood garden, with a water meadow opposite, the cows tramped the mud as they came down to the stream and swifts and swallows swooped taking it for their nests. I fished there catching sticklebacks and minnows with my jam jar. Years later buildings of bypass, houses, industrial sheds on farm land up stream were all supposed to store the run off created. This run off is now intense, it's faster, it's gouged the stream making it well over a meter wider and deeper in places. The first rains in summer run a thick grey from tyre waste then the river runs brown as in your photos. It's so fast it doesn't have time to gently flood and linger for a day or two and has very little life in it. Our issue is not horrendous chicken farms ours is lack of planning in how to store and use "brown water" in local development. I imagine this happens upstream of the Wye's chicken farms compounding the problem.
Absolutely I imagine it does, as it happens all across the country as we “develop” more and more land with no thought to the natural processes and systems that are being disrupted.