When a factory farm moves in, the whole community feels it. Residents face persistent odours, heavy lorry traffic on narrow country roads, and serious health risks from air pollution.

High concentrations of ammonia generate fine particulate matter, a pollutant directly linked to asthma, cardiovascular disease, lung cancer and reduced life expectancy.

Children, elderly people and anyone with underlying health conditions are especially vulnerable.

The threat doesn't stop at your front door. Intensive farming creates the perfect conditions for zoonotic diseases like bird flu to emerge and spread.

Beyond this, the routine use of antibiotics in overcrowded factory farms is a significant driver of antimicrobial resistance, one of the most serious public health challenges of our time.

Ancient woodlands, protected habitats and irreplaceable ecological sites are being destroyed to make way for intensive units, and the pollution they generate spreads far beyond their walls.

UK pig and poultry farms alone produce around 10.4 million cubic metres of waste every year; the equivalent of more than 4,000 Olympic swimming pools, filled with nitrogen and phosphorus that our soil simply cannot absorb.

When that excess runs off into rivers and wetlands, it poisons waterways and devastates freshwater wildlife.

The River Wye, once one of Britain's most celebrated rivers, is already facing ecological collapse due to pollution from local intensive chicken farms. It is a warning of what is at stake across the country.

The consequences stretch beyond our waterways. Agriculture accounts for around 10% of the UK's total greenhouse gas emissions, 62% of which comes directly from livestock, with a further 28% from nutrient management.

A staggering 40% of arable land in the UK is used not to feed people, but to grow crops for farmed animals, placing enormous and unsustainable pressure on our land and food system at a time when we can least afford it.

Chickens, pigs and other animals raised in intensive systems endure severe overcrowding, chronic respiratory distress, high mortality rates and lives defined by fear and pain.

95% of UK chickens raised for meat and 73% of UK pigs are living in the lowest legally permissible welfare conditions. Chickens are confined to spaces smaller than an A4 sheet of paper and will never feel grass under their feet.

Piglets routinely undergo tail docking without pain relief.

These are sentient creatures capable of suffering, yet UK standards still permit chicken breeds to be genetically manipulated to grow as large as possible, as quickly as possible, to the severe detriment of their health.

The oversight meant to protect them is failing. Fewer than 3% of intensive farms are inspected each year, and where inspections do occur, nearly a third identify non-compliance with animal welfare regulations. Only 2.3% of non-compliance cases are ever prosecuted meaning the industry knows it can break the rules with almost no consequences.