Farming Today

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Farming Today: 01/03/2023 - Chicken welfare, Pig medicine, Northern Ireland sheep

01/03/2023 - Chicken welfare, Pig medicine, Northern Ireland sheep

BBC Radio 4 - Farming Today, 01/03/2023 - Chicken welfare, Pig medicine, Northern Ireland sheep

Fast-growing chicken breeds, zinc treatment for pigs, farmers and the Windsor agreement.

Legal challenge to fast-growing breeds of chicken, could banning zinc oxide on pig farms could lead to more antibiotics, and Northern Ireland sheep farmers on the Windsor agreement.

The RSPCA is backing a legal challenge which says fast-growing breeds of chicken, which are slaughtered at around six-weeks-old,  should not be allowed. The charity The Humane League is seeking a judicial review in the High Court, arguing that fast-growing broilers have intrinsic animal welfare challenges, including being unable to support their own weight. We speak to a poultry expert with the RSPCA and the British Poultry Council, which says welfare standards on UK farms are extremely high.

A medicine which controls a serious illness in piglets will soon stop being used, and there’s concern that farmers will turn to antibiotics instead. Zinc oxide prevents post-weaning diarrhoea, but when it's excreted in pig slurry it can pollute soils, so its use is ending across Europe. 

Farmers in Northern Ireland say the new Windsor Framework is not changing enough. Sheep farmers in the province have traditionally bought stock in Great Britain, to bring in new blood to their flocks. But since leaving the EU, and with the Northern Ireland Protocol, that's been much more difficult and in some cases impossible to do. However, the National Sheep Association in Northern Ireland says the new Windsor agreement will do little to help them.

Presenter - Anna Hill
Producer - Rebecca Rooney

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01/03/2023 - Chicken welfare, Pig medicine, Northern Ireland sheep

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