Fonterra sticks by criticism of 'factory' plan

Fonterra has criticised plans for massive indoor dairy farming in the South Island despite cows at its farm in China never seeing the sky, spending their lives in containment.

Fonterra's herd of about 5000 animals at its 35-hectare farm at Tangshan in Hebei province, east of Beijing, lives inside and does not graze on grass. The cows are milked three times a day.

Fonterra this week condemned resource consent applications by a three-company venture to establish an 18,000-cow dairying operation in containment in the Mackenzie Basin. The Green Party called the venture "factory farming".

Fonterra said it was concerned about the environmental sustainability of such an operation and the potential detrimental effect on New Zealand's dairying image. When BusinessDay raised the example of its Chinese farm, Fonterra said that was the way dairying was done in China and its chief concern was for the "fragile" environment of the Mackenzie Basin.

Fonterra established its farm in China to supply milk to its joint venture business SanLu, which was shamed and bankrupted in last year's infant formula melamine poisoning incident that swept the Chinese dairy processing industry killing at least four babies and making hundreds of thousands sick with kidney problems. The farm now supplies other processors.

- © Fairfax NZ News