“Dirty Dairying” - An environmental hazard
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Environmentally unsound dairy farming practices in New Zealand are beginning to come under increased scrutiny after a recent Environment Court fine handed down to a repeat offender got media coverage in both UK and the US. An opinion article by Sudesh Kissun in Rural News stated:
Most dairy farmers respect the environment and their farming practices are commendable.But it’s time for the industry and especially [diary company] Fonterra to get tough on the culprits – time to show everyone that there is no place for dirty dairying in New Zealand.
More recently a report has been released by the Waikato Regional Council (Environment Waikato) which says that water quality has deteriorated over the last decade, resulting in over 75 percent of waterways tested being unsafe even for livestock to drink from. While Kissun's article blames the problem on a small number of badly behaving farmers and sees it as Fonterra's responsibility to change these farmers practices, an article from the paper earlier last month (quoted in a Green Party press release) revealed that
Fonterra must be sitting smugly on the back of its lobbying against the Government’s threatened hard line for the dairy sector before the release of the national water policy. The legislative proposal that has emerged is watered down,… fails to follow up any of Environment Minister Trevor Mallard’s warnings, and is unlikely to lead to any immediate change in farming practices”
Its not unfair to say that Fonterra, with an annual turnover of $13.9 billion, is more concerned with its bottom line than with the quality of New Zealand's waterways. The government has recently passed legislation for an Emissions Trading Scheme with the goal of meeting New Zealand's obligations under they Kyoto Protocol. Farming, the other main environmental concern of which is methane emissions, will enter the scheme in 2013, and it seems consumers will bear the extra costs, again, not impacting on Fonterra's profits.
