A huge chicken farm supplying birds for slaughter and sale in UK supermarkets has been given the go-ahead by council planners.
High Slade Properties will build the complex at an existing crop farm site west of Cropwell Bishop in Rushcliffe, close to the A46, after it was approved by Rushcliffe Borough Council.
The authority decided it did not meet the criteria to be assessed by a planning committee, so it was approved by an officer, subject to a list of conditions.
The development will consist of four sheds housing 55,000 indoor-reared birds, producing a total of up to 220,000 chickens every 45 days.
It will produce up to eight flocks every 12 months – meaning it will supply more than a million chickens a year for dinner tables across the country.
Birds would not actually be slaughtered on site, but taken to a farm in Lincolnshire.
More than 250 comments on the plan were submitted, most of which objected to the plan, and animal rights group Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), also opposed it on animal welfare grounds.
But Ian Pick, a planning consultant commissioned to draw up the application by High Slade Properties, defended the plan at the time of the application.
He said: “The industry has to comply with welfare standards – it is at the top of a farmer’s mind. If your chickens are not healthy you do not make any money.”
