Chicken campaigners block entrance at Herefordshire feed mill

At 6am this morning (March 27), Extinction Rebellion activists returned to Avara’s Allensmore feed mill, blocking the entrance with a 10-foot-tall bamboo structure and a banner accusing Cargill and Avara of killing the river Wye.

The group say they had little alternative but to escalate their protest since closing the site down in July last year, after a court judgement against Avara's parent company Cargill over pollution in the river Illinois in the USA.

The protesters say this proves that Avara's parent company, Cargill, has known of the damage phosphates cause to the ecosystem.

Today, Extinction Rebellion activists are demanding that Avara-Cargill commits to financial reparations here in the UK, to restore the River Wye to its natural state, and that they cease building or expanding intensive poultry units of any description within the Wye catchment area. 

“It is now abundantly clear that Avara knowingly and deliberately polluted the Wye, using our beloved river as a sewer to maximise their profits.” says David Gillam, from Peterchurch.

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“It is time that Avara committed to paying to restore the Wye as a matter of urgency. The familiar principle of ‘the polluter pays’ should apply here just as it does in the USA.”

Activists also said that Avara-Cargill should make sure that none of their chicken manure ever leaches into the river as there are already 3,000 tonnes of excess phosphorus in the Wye Valley, which will take years to be used up.

"The only way to do this is by stopping spreading any manure anywhere in the Wye catchment," an XR spokesperson said.

"Avara-Cargill’s current promise of a huge anaerobic digester is entirely unproven technology that doesn’t provide any solution to the phosphate problem."

Lou Wombacher-Hadden from Herefordshire, one of the activists blocking the site entrance today said: “I’m really concerned about the devastating effect Avara-Cargill’s inaction will have on tourism and employment in the area.

"The RSPB says that the economic value of the River Wye to tourism and employment in the area was estimated at £385 million in 2018. The river provides around 7,700 jobs, so we can’t just ignore the impact this environmental disaster will have on local people.”

Avara, Herefordshire’s largest employer, has pledged to make sure that their supply chain does not contribute excess phosphorus to the Wye in the next two years. 

"We do not spread manure and there is no runoff from poultry farms – so we are not, and have never been, a direct polluter of the waterway," a spokesperson for the firm said.

"That said, we understand the indirect impact we have, through the use of manure elsewhere in the catchment – typically on arable and pasture land as fertiliser."

The spokesperson said Avara is serious about playing its part, but that their action alone is unlikely to be enough. 

"It’s vital that others in the catchment follow suit, particularly those that do directly contribute to the problem," they said.