Welcome to stench ground zero: The village where an unspeakable two

Release time：2024-05-21 18:22:26 Source：Culture Compass news portal

The 200-odd residents of the teeny village of Stow Bedon in Breckland, Norfolk are used to living under siege.

Every few days or so, they make sure their windows, doors, even cat flaps, are closed tight. Animals are kept inside. Barbecues are out of action. Patios are deserted.

They tell me that on 'bad days' they wouldn't dream of hanging their washing out in the spring breeze to dry. Or inviting friends over for a meal, or even to pop by for a coffee.

Jan Fryer visits Stow Bedon where villages complain of a monstrous stench emanating from the industrial-sized pig factory 

'We can't risk it. It would be far too embarrassing. You never know when it's going to be off the scale. Easter was a total wash out. We couldn't go outside at all,' says Ann Cuthbert, 66.

'And it gets in the upholstery, the carpets, the curtains – even the dog smells of it,' adds her husband, John, 65.

They're talking about the monstrous smell they say has – on and off – blighted their village for the last two years.

Young pigs spend three months in seven massive hangars at the edge of the village where they are fattened up before being sent to the slaughter house

An acrid, eye-burning, throat-stinging stench, which they say has caused nose bleeds, headaches, insomnia and anxiety.

It smells like, well, exactly what it is – pig urine and faeces with an ammonia-rich pong that it is hard to forget.

And, apparently, it comes from the industrial-sized pig finishing unit on the edge of the village where, every year, 7,000 animals are bought in at 11-weeks-old to spend the next three months in seven massive metal hangars, being fattened up for slaughter.

Ann Cuthbert says the smell is so bad she does not invite friends over for dinner or coffee as it is too embarrassing 

Ann and John, both health workers, live 280 metres from the epicentre of the stench.

'We all know about farming. This is Norfolk – it's pig farming country,' says John. 'But this is an industrial plant. A factory. It's not natural and it isn't farming anymore.'

There have been pigs at Cherry Tree Farm since the 1960s. Up until 2019, it was home to 600 sows, who pottered about in the fields, rolled in the mud, felt the sun on their backs and farrowed like crazy.

Cranswick Plc, formerly a small pig farm, is owned by a billion-pound company and houses 7,000 animals in it's industrial-sized buildings

Then Cranswick Plc – a billion-pound pork and poultry firm with facilities countrywide – bought the land. They soon applied to extend operations and – despite increasingly frantic objections from residents, the parish council, Breckland Council and, by the sound of it, pretty much everyone else – within two years had expanded to accommodate 7,000 pigs, with three full-time staff to keep an eye on them all.

Oh yes, and along the way they breached its permit on 12 counts and received more than 400 complaints – not only about the smell, but the air pollution and dangers presented by ammonia, a chemical that leaches from pig waste, which has been linked to increased death rates, cardiovascular disease, respiratory problems, cognitive decline and low birth weights.

One resident was advised by her GP not to try for a baby, while another was given an inhaler, despite having no history of respiratory illness.

The pretty village of Stow Bedon in Norfolk where locals can longer enjoy the fresh air 

Hannah Reed, says her dogs have developed skin disease. One old boy further down the main street says the acrid air burns his eyes and makes his nose sore.

Several residents tell me that house prices are estimated to be down 25 per cent in the village, already.

'We're doing everything we can – complaining, logging pollution levels, calling them twice a day,' says Ann, who is a one-woman whirlwind of facts, figures and parish council minutes, and is known locally as the 'nerve centre' of anti-Cranswick operations.

But even she is struggling.

'It feels like we're banging our heads against a brick wall. I'm losing the will to carry on – it's just so frustrating.'

Because, as the locals see it, Cranswick, a FTSE 250 food giant, which has 10,000 employees and last year generated revenue of more than £2.3 billion, doesn't seem to be playing by the rules.

'They seem to be able to get away with murder,' says Theresa Fitzgerald, 71, a retired teacher who has lived in the village for 22 years. 'They've breached planning permissions, there have been Environmental Agency breaches. We can't fight them – they're a massive company so it would bankrupt us. They seem to have a free pass to do whatever they like. And they never, ever, reply to us.'

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They do, however, reply to me. And insist they have played everything by the book, that the smell is really not that bad – or certainly not when they monitored it – and that they applied for retrospective planning when the Environmental Agency changed the requirement of the permit.

They also point out that none of the 700 employees on their sites across the country have suffered any health problems caused by ammonia fumes – so they can't really see how it can be affecting the residents of Stow Bedon.

But, then again, Cranswick has been popping up in the news rather a lot lately.

Earlier this month, another of its facilities – a £1.5million, 40,000-bird chicken farm in Westhall, near Halesworth, Suffolk (owned by Cranswick's subsidiary, Crown Chicken) hit the headlines after locals complained of terrible fly infestations.

Poor Alastair Cameron, an 84-year-old grandfather, has seen his home, which overlooks the site, plagued with flies. His kitchen is a jungle of heavily-loaded fly papers and the surfaces are crawling. He's had to stuff the spout of his kettle with paper to stop the flies getting in, sleeps under a mosquito net at night and claims the chickens are making him unwell.

(Cranswick point out that the council and Environmental Agency have visited the site and found nothing to directly link the flies with the farm.)

Furthermore, a hoo-ha erupted last August in Watton, also in Norfolk, when residents living near one of the company's meat processing plants complained of the 'gut-wrenching' smells coming from the factory's 'blood pit'.

Theresa Fitzgerald, 71, a retired teacher who has lived in the village for 22 years, claims the company has breached planning permission

And again, in Eye, Suffolk, when a stench like 'boiled chicken and death', thought to be from the nearby Cranswick Country Foods processing plant, drove residents either indoors or off to their GPs.

But perhaps more worrying for those living in Breckland right now, is that Cranswick has their eye on another site – just a few miles from Stow Bedon, in Methwold and Feltwell – where they are hoping to build two more mega farms, for 6.4 million chickens and 56,000 pigs.

Methwold's Denise Charlesworth-Smith set up the Cranswick Objection Group last April, desperate to protect her local area.

'They'll do exactly the same as they did in Stow Bedon,' she says. 'Breach planning permission, breach environmental issues and somehow be able to do exactly what they like.'

Again, Cranswick insist that this is not the case.

'Nothing is yet finalised,' says a spokesperson, reiterating that this is 'agricultural heartland' where pig and chicken farms have existed since the 1950s.

One thing that really upset residents – other than the smell – is the sense that no one is standing up to Cranswick.

Not Breckland Council it seems – 'They're afraid to make a fuss,' says one resident.

And certainly not their local MP, Liz Truss.

When I mention her name in Stow Bedon, residents laugh.

'She came to one meeting and looked so bored, like she just wanted to get out of there,' says Hannah Reed, a local for 22 years. 'And we haven't heard from her since. She's campaigned against travellers, but nothing for us.'

In 2015, Truss went on a trade trip to China with Cranswick CEO Adam Couch. The trip was announced in her now-infamous speech at the Tory party conference the year before, when she grinned that she'd be 'in Bejing, opening up new pork markets'.

Not surprisingly, a spokesperson for Truss was having none of it when I spoke to him this week.

'Liz has taken up residents' concerns with the borough council of Kings Lynn and West Norfolk, which is run by independent councillors who are responsible for the enforcement of this issue, along with the Environmental Agency,' he said very firmly.

And Cranswick was equally robust.

'We've had no sort of favouritism from Liz Truss at all.'

Who knows, perhaps the real problem isn't Cranswick, or Truss, or to some extent – though I'm not sure Ann and the rest of the Stow Bedon gang would agree – even the rancid smell.

Perhaps it is the countrywide surge of mega farms that make us feel uncomfortable. These are sites with more than 2,500 indoor production pigs and 700 indoor breeding pigs or 40,000 birds, which produce cheaper, lower quality meat to compete with low-priced imports (and don't even produce many local jobs) that seem to be bucking the trend for healthier, more local and better raised meat.

'Does the UK really want to go down this route?' asks Theresa. 'Do we really want to copy somewhere like China, where we get cheap nasty meat, and they've had swine fever because they're farming so intensely?'

Certainly, the more I chat, the more crossed wires there seem to be here in Stow Bedon.

When locals tell me most of the pork is being exported to China, Cranswick's spokesperson clarifies that it is all the bits of the pig we refuse to eat here – the heads, trotters, stomachs etc, which in turn keeps the price of British pork for British consumers lower.

The same with the chickens – only the bits we won't eat.

Cranswick also claims that at no time have ammonia monitors on the farm rung alarm bells.

So it's all a bit of a mystery.

Because there seems no doubt that the smell is appalling, or that the villagers are smelling it.

'It's not just an odour. It affects soft tissues, eyes, the top of your nose, the back of your throat and the lungs. It's like very, very strong urine and it makes you gag,' says Ann.

'Our son has just got engaged and asked for a marquee in the garden, but we couldn't possibly risk it.'

Could it really have no relation to Cranswick? I'm sorry, but I don't believe that for a second.

On the day I visit – and much to Ann's disappointment – there's not much to smell.

Just a low country hum in the air and, at the risk of being impolite, a distinct internal odour in some of the houses I visit – presumably due to pong permeation.

So I do not see the ammonia-laden air rolling in a thick cloud up the side of the Cuthberts' house – though she shows me a video.

Or, thank goodness, breathe in a smell so strong it can so confuse my senses and food starts to taste of animal faeces and urine.

Instead, I see a really gorgeous spot. A village where the gardens are proudly maintained, the exquisite views from St Botolph church are exquisite, and where the sounds of birdsong and spring are bursting everywhere, but no one is able to relax and enjoy it anymore.

Before I leave, I take a walk along a public footpath that runs a few hundred yards from the unit and listen to the pigs inside, clear as anything, squealing and screaming and jostling for space as they get bigger and bigger. And just as I reach the end of the field, the wind changes and the smell hits me hard and square, and I can imagine it seeping into my kitchen, into my clothes and into my food and I can see what all the fuss is about.

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