IN response to your article "Dairy farm boss welcomes WI's move" (Thursday, June 16), I would like to clarify that Compassion in World Farming opposes "mega-dairies", like the one that Peter Willes was proposing at Nocton, on grounds of animal welfare issues.

In Mr Willes' proposed mega-dairy, and something he failed to mention in the above article, the cows would be kept indoors for the majority of their lives with little or no access to pasture. Cows are natural grazers and enjoy feeding on grass, leaves and shrubs. As well as denying them basic behavioural needs, research reviewed by the European Food Safety Authority shows that this type of "zero-grazing" system is associated with increased risk of many health problems. Cows are faced with higher levels of lameness, mastitis, reproductive problems and a number of bacterial infections in these intensive factory farms.

These cows, bred specifically to produce vast quantities of milk, may be worked beyond endurance. The amount of energy these animals need to expend in order to produce 10,000 or more litres of milk each per year is equivalent to a human being running a half marathon every day for ten months of the year: exhausting.

Peter Willes says WI "consumers" want mega-dairies. However, surveys consistently show that consumers don't want milk from mega-dairies. Evidence of widespread consumer abhorrence to mega-dairies can be seen in the tens of thousands of members of the public who opposed the Nocton dairy.

I believe proposals such as Peter Willes' mega-dairy at Nocton are the wrong route for dairy farming in Britain. They threaten animal welfare and the countryside; they will put hard-pressed family farms under even more pressure.

The bottom line is that cows belong in fields not in industrial dairies.

PAT THOMAS,

Campaign Projects Manager,

Compassion in World Farming.