Intensive dairy farming may be introduced in New Zealand

New Zealand is on the brink of introducing factory farming of dairy cows, which could hurt the country's international brand and competitiveness.

Consent applications were recently lodged with Environment Canterbury for factory-style dairy farms in the Mackenzie Basin.

Three companies plan to establish 16 new farms with nearly 18,000 cows in the area. According to the applications, all 18,000 cows will be housed in 'cubicle stables' 24 hours a day for eight months of the year, and 12 hours a day for the remaining four months.

Those proposals are a radical departure from New Zealand's tradition of farming stock outside and on pasture, and could greatly hurt the country's clean, green international brand and competitiveness, said Green Party Co-leader Russel Norman.

The brand image would be damaged in the eyes of overseas consumers, he said.

Fonterra counters European rivals by saying New Zealand's products are more environmentally-friendly than factory-farmed milk, and this proposal goes against that strategy, said Norman.

It is also a step-back from an animal welfare perspective, he added.

Norman also expressed concern at the environmental impact of the proposals, saying they could put the Upper Waitaki River and high country lakes at risk from effluent run off and algal blooms. It could also produce the effluent equivalent to a city of 270,000 people in the Mackenzie basin.

The consent applications include effluent ponds with 414 million litres of storage capacity and plans to put as much as 1.7 million litres of diluted effluent onto the land every day.