January 4, 2021

 

Aviagen seeks to set up second chicken farm in Perthshire, central Scotland, despite opposition

 
 

Aviagen is seeking to establish a second chicken farm in rural Perthshire, central Scotland, even as it faces more than 200 objections to an ongoing proposal.

 

The company has submitted plans to Perth and Kinross Council for a 16,000 bird industrial poultry unit (IPU) between Crieff and Auchterarder. It also has an application sitting with the local authority for a 26,000 bird chicken farm at Murthly which has sparked fury among village residents.

 

The latest proposal would see 4,000 birds kept in four sheds on land at Kinkell Bridge near the road connecting the two towns.

 

The farm would be built on part of a former poultry unit but three disused sheds would be demolished and replaced by new structures.

 

The application has yet to receive any objections. However, 247 people have lodged complaints about Aviagen's other proposal for a farm 20 miles to the north in Murthly.

 

Residents in Murthly have also written to the Scottish government and Perth and Kinross Council, asking for a six month moratorium to be placed on new IPU's being built anywhere in the country.

 

Critics have pointed to a scientific study that has emerged from 2017 linking the IPUs to community-acquired pneumonia (CAP).

 

The report conducted by Utrecht University in The Netherlands found that living within 1.15km of a poultry farm led to an 11% increase in risk of contracting CAP.

 

In March last year, protesters took to the streets after Perth and Kinross Council signed off on an egg farm housing 32,000 hens on the edge of Ardler.

 

Aviagen has maintained that its buildings are state-of-the art and claimed in its Crieff application that the sheds were for a "pedigree breeder laying farm."

 

- The Courier