Editor,

We are lucky in mid Wales to have many local farmers supplying high quality, genuinely sustainable food and they have well deserved wholehearted public support. But let’s be absolutely clear: Intensive poultry units (IPUs) are industrial installations and not farming as most people would understand it – and support for one in no way equates to support for the other (Food production and the environment are not competitors, Cambrian News, 3 March).

It is disingenuous for Abi Reader to pretend the public can’t see or understand the difference. There are very many reasons for the public opposition to these units, including threats to human health, well-being and the environment, as well as unacceptable levels of animal cruelty.

The proliferation of these chicken factories in mid Wales has already resulted in significant pollution and degradation of our rivers.

She tells us that “the rhetoric that a so-called ‘explosion’ of poultry businesses is choking our rivers or even turning them pea soup green…is very inaccurate, unhelpful and goes against what the science is telling us”. Quite the reverse is true as anyone living near these rivers will tell her and the evidence that poultry units play a major role in this is clear.

This summer saw algal blooms in the Wye which made it resemble a ‘pea soup’,” said James Byrne from Wildlife Trusts Wales and…points to the growth of intensive poultry farms (IPU) in Powys as particularly concerning.

For the farming sector or NRW to claim that there is no proven causal link between the Wye/Ithon algal blooms and poultry units within the Ithon valley is looking to be an unsustainable position. Finally it should be remembered that these devastating effects on local communities and our precious environment are primarily for the benefit of multinationals outside Wales.

They take the lion’s share of the profits while local communities in Wales pay the price. We must call for a moratorium on these poultry units before further damage is done and I urge your readers to sign the Senedd petition here: https://petitions.senedd.wales/petitions/24499

Sarah Reisz, Talybont