China's 10,000-Head Dairy Farms Produce Mountains Of Waste; Petri Dishes For Disease
GANNAN, China (AFP) - Giant piles of black manure towering over cornfields, while rancid-smelling effluent from thousands of cows spills onto the land - this is the price of a glass of milk in China today. Large-scale dairy farms have boomed in the Asian giant, as its near 1.4 billion consumers overcame centuries of cultural reluctance to embrace the white fluid.
An economic boom and government backing transformed dairy into a US$40-billion-a-year industry, shifting production away from small-scale producers towards massive megafarms with up to 10,000 cattle - and a lot more waste.
"The smell of the manure... in the summer it's very intense," said Ren Xiangjun, a farmer in Gannan county. Pointing at a stream of green water escaping from under a grey brick wall at the giant farm owned by agro-conglomerate Feihe International, he added: "You can see how it flows right out of the farm. Dodging packets of animal medicine and syringes littered nearby, he explained: "The rubbish left after injections is just thrown here. My land is directly affected." When the Feihe farm opened in 2012 in the grassy hills of the northern province of Heilongjiang it said it had 10,000 cows.
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Dismounting from a tractor a stone's throw from the manure piles in Daxing, one farmer said: "The pollution hasn't been cleaned up well. Of course it has an impact." Pointing to corn stalks growing beside syringes, he added: "We don't eat these ourselves. We sell them to the market".
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http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/chinas-giant-cow-farms-polluting-the-environment-with-manure-and-waste