'Hounded' Crafar family sells up dairy farms

DONNA WALSH/Waikato Times

CRAFAR FAMILY: Crafarms Ltd owners (L-R) Allan Crafar, Frank Crafar, and Elizabeth Crafar.

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One of the country's biggest dairy farming operations say they have been hounded by authorities over dirty dairying and will sell all their farms.

The Crafar family, which owns Crafarms, is selling the 22 dairy and dry stock farms the company owns in the central North Island.

Crafar-owned farms have been prosecuted for a string of resource consent infringements over a number of years, mostly for breaching effluent discharge rules.

In the latest case last month, the company, brothers Allan and Frank Crafar and Allan's wife Elizabeth were fined a record $90,000 after being convicted of 34 charges relating to a "systemic failure" of an effluent system on a farm near Hamilton.

Waikato Regional Council, which brought the prosecution, said the farm had dairy effluent seeping from ponds, discharges from feed pads on to yards and land, discharges from a broken irrigator hose, overflows from sumps, over-irrigation of paddocks.

Allan Crafar told Radio New Zealand that the family felt hounded by councils and government red tape and the latest conviction was the final straw.

The regional council denied the charge saying in some cases prosecutions against the company were the result of complaints from the public.

- NZPA