This event will kick off with a screening of Pig Business In Northern Ireland a campaigning film exposing a major health and environmental threat unfolding in farms across Northern Ireland. The scary thing is this isn’t as a result of illegal criminality but actually integral to the local Assembly’s Programme for Growth. It is criminality all the same with more of it on its way if not resisted.
The film is produced by Farms Not Factories in collaboration with Friends of the Earth Northern Ireland to inform the public and expose the true costs of pig factories on local peoples’ lives.
Resistance is growing but should planning permissions continue to be granted, emissions from thousands of pigs crammed into huge sheds and thousands of tonnes of slurry will damage local protected sites and ruin local peoples’ lives with the toxic stench.
Meanwhile the overuse of antibiotics, essential for keeping the pigs alive when in such close proximity, leads to antibiotic-resistant diseases some of which can pass from pigs to humans.
Speakers for the Q & A
James Orr (Director of Friends Of The Earth NI) will introduce the film and why Friends of the Earth decided to collaborate with with Farms Not Factories in the making of it.
Post screening together with Diane Greer of Stop the Limavady Pig Factory he will participate in a Q & A on the issues raised in the film.
Diane Greer ( Stop the Limavady Pig Factory Campaigner) has been working in community based education for many years. Currently living in the Roe Valley she and others formed Stop the Limavady Pig Factory to fight the development locally of an intensive pig factory. It has been an awakening of sorts for her and led to a much deeper commitment to holding government to account on the plan for the rapid extension of Factory Farming and associated Anaerobic Digestion.
The Q & A will be chaired by Jim Keys of Zero Waste North West (ZWNW). ZWNW is an environmental activist group focused on transitioning the region from its waste generating linear economy to a zero waste circular one.