Poultry processor Avara foods is facing a multi-million pound legal challenge following alleged pollution of the River Wye. Expect the scandal to spread, says David Burrows.
Finger on the pulse. Last week, on the topic of farm pollution and environmental regulation, we warned: “Fingers have been pointing at farmers but food companies – the poultry processors and their customers in retail and foodservice – should prepare for the you-know-what to hit the fan.” And this week it has. And it’s only the start.
Poultry pooper. Poultry supplier Avara Foods is being sued for allegedly damaging the River Wye – in Herefordshire and the Welsh borders – and the local economy. The legal claim, potentially worth hundreds of millions of pounds, has been launched by law firm Leigh Day in a bid to compensate thousands of people living in the Wye catchment likely to have been affected in recent years.
Swimming in shit. In 2023, the River Wye was downgraded by Natural England to “unfavourable – declining” status. There have been complaints of people become sick after swimming in the river, pervasive algal blooms, the disappearance of local species, and other forms of environmental degradation have become “widespread”, according to the claim.
Finger pointing. Leigh Day will allege that the main change in the region, and the “clear primary source” of the recent pollution of the River Wye, is the expanded operations of Avara Foods – a subsidiary of US commodity behemoth Cargill – that supplies a host of leading supermarkets and restaurants, including Tesco and Nandos (with barn-reared birds). The number of chickens farmed in the area has reportedly jumped from 13 million to 24 million in 10 years, with Avara responsible for 16 million of them. For context, the second largest poultry operation in the region (Noble Foods, an egg packer) has about 500,000 birds.
See you in court. The number of birds produced by Avara Foods in the River Wye catchment, the growth rate and resulting feed consumption required by this intensive poultry rearing business model, and the short turnaround for farmers to dispose of manure in time for the next crop of chicks, is allegedly placing “predictable and unsustainable pressure on the nutrient cycle of the River Wye”, a Leigh Day spokesperson told Footprint. The claim also alleges that this “consistent and known overloading of phosphorus from the operations of Avara Foods has caused the environmental degradation of the River Wye”.
Mineral waters. Poultry manure is four to five times more concentrated in phosphorus than the manure of other animals. A reportpublished in May 2022 by the University of Lancaster, ‘Re-focusing phosphorus use in the Wye catchment’ (RePhoKUs report), concluded that 60% to 70% of the river’s total ‘phosphorus load’ now comes from agriculture. The academics wrote: “The imbalance between agricultural phosphorous input (fertiliser, manure and biosolids) and offtake (grass and crops) means that around 3000 tonnes of surplus phosphorous are accumulating in agricultural soils in the Wye catchment every year, a rate equivalent to 17kgPha-1, which is considerably higher than the national average of 7kg ha-1.”
A terrible phosphate. Phosphorus is a key nutrient required for crop and livestock production, but it’s a finite resource and we are wasting it by the bucket load. A 2022 study published in the Journal of Environmental Management showed the UK food system is only 43% efficient in phosphorous: we were importing around 174,000 tonnes of the mineral but only 74,000 tonnes of it was ending up in food and exportable commodities.
A real stink. The “hotspots” for this inefficiency were: agricultural soil surplus and accumulation; loss to aquatic environments; and waste disposal to landfill and construction. The greatest soil phosphorous accumulation occurred in grassland agriculture, “driven by loadings of livestock manures”, the study noted.
Polluter pays. As you can imagine, green NGOs are delighted by the move to hold Avara to account. “With a huge percentage of this industry controlled by Avara, it is entirely appropriate that the polluter must now be made to pay to clean up the mess we believe it has created and subsequently profited from,” said the Rivers Trust (which has been working with Leigh Day on a separate legal case against the Environment Agency over its alleged failure to stop farmers polluting the Wye).
Phosphor-it’s-not-us? Avara poo-pooed the claim, telling media outlets that it “ignores the long-standing use of phosphate-rich fertiliser by arable farms as well as the clear scientific data showing the issue of excess phosphorus considerably pre-dates the growth of poultry farms in the Wye catchment”.
Poultry poo plan. Last month, the company reported progress against its ‘Sustainable poultry roadmap’. As of January, 74% of the 142,263 tonnes of poultry manure from Avara farms is being “exported” from the catchment, while 26% is being used in a soil assurance standard trial with Red Tractor. “[…] we anticipate our actions will have very little impact on the health of the river”, Avara wrote. There are 30 catchment farms in the pilot, compared to 3,500 arable and fresh produce farms in the catchment, the two-page update notes.
Every little harms. Tesco is having its fingers burned as a key customer of Avara (a “significant factor” in the increase in poultry production in the region after 2018 was reportedly to meet the chicken meat demands of the supermarket chain). Companies are producing the shit and dumping it on someone else to deal with, Ruth Westcott from Sustain, told us. And when the manure is so cheap, free or farmers are being paid to take it away, there is “no incentive not to over-fertilise”, she added.
Chickening out. Many farmers are of course working to a food (and profit) system where they have little choice or flexibility, continued Westcott’s colleague Will White. It’s certainly not fun in the chicken sector currently: 15% of poultry meat producers are either unlikely or unsure they will be in this game come the end of next year, according to a recent NFU survey. A lack of fairness, soaring input costs and cheap imports are all causing stress, and it takes a brave soul to continue with chickens these days. “We have a government that emphasises the importance of thriving domestic production but has created an environment for it to do anything but,” wrote British poultry council’s Kerry Maxwell in the latest issue of Poultry Business.
Cheap cheap. At the NFU conference last month, the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, promised a review of the broiler sector supply chain – but little detail has emerged since. The cost of living crisis is only likely to force more pressure down a supply chain that is already cracking.
Risk and reward. Avara has just posted a loss of £12.8m in the year to May 2023, and is now focused on “fewer, but better invested facilities”. The company’s submission to Companies House – which details a decent amount of homework in relation to greenhouse gas emissions and risks of late – doesn’t show litigation on its risks and opportunities matrix (page 10). Increasing regulation and legislation is marked as quite likely but not particularly worrying. But the next matrix may look a little different next time round.
Watch the muck spread. Avara is the firm in the firing line currently, as is Tesco; but it won’t be long before campaigners and lawyers come knocking at other doors as they interrogate big users of poultry and tie them to pollution problems. Mark our words: this story will spread further than the Wye and further than just poultry. The problem, and the solutions, go far deeper.
