• Rethinking meat Peter and Henri Grieg of Pipers Farm

Peter and Henri Grieg of Pipers Farm applaud vegans’ stance against industrial farming, but it’s not a case of meat versus plants, they tell Rebecca Frank

Peter Grieg (aka ‘ Piper’ of Pipers Farm in Devon) is in a Bristol restaurant brandishing a cowpat. The freshly harvested cowpat has travelled from the farm with Peter, his wife and fellow farmer Henri, and the Pipers team to a ‘meet the producers’ event at The Ethicurean, one of the many good restaurants that buy their meat directly from them. “This magnificent cowpat is a footprint of sustainability and biodiversity,” Peter begins as he goes on to give a compelling talk about the industrialisation of the meat industry and what he calls Pipers “horse and cart” style of farming.

Animal welfare and sustainable farming lie at the heart of Pipers Farm and Henri and Peter pride themselves on the low input farming methods (minimising the use of ‘off farm’ materials such as feed, pesticides and fertilisers) they have been practising for 29 years. However, it was their experience at the other end of the scale that inspired them to do things differently. After graduating from Wye College in Kent where they met studying agriculture, the couple spent time farming in Australia, New Zealand and then Wensleydale in North Yorkshire before coming back to Peter’s home in Kent, where they took over his father’s chicken farm.

“My father brought the concept of industrialised chicken farming back to the UK from America in the 1950s,” explains Peter. For two years the couple farmed chickens for a supermarket chain before their principles forced them into making a life-changing decision. “In the 1950s it took 50 days to grow a 4lb chicken, in 1989 we had 35 days. Now it’s 28,” explains Henri. Growing industrial chickens requires the use of genetics and antibiotics to enable the fast growing and prevent disease. The chickens suffer from health problems because they’re oversized and kept in cramped conditions where they’re standing or sitting in their own muck. “We were doing ¼ million chickens a year off a ¼ acre site. These birds are squashed into a barn so cramped that you cannot lift your feet as you walk through it. There’s muck all over the floor and the light has to be low all the time or they eat each other. The birds have no immunity because they’re grown so fast; it’s dark, warm and damp and bacteria is rife, so the only way to keep them alive is with antibiotics. And this is the reality for over 90% of the chickens on sale today.” Henri explains how 29 years ago, they were warning medics that if people go on eating antibiotics in their poultry, we were going to face antibiotic resistance. “Nobody believed us because we were only farmers.”

By this time, Peter and Henri had two young sons, Ed and Will, and one day they turned to each other and said, “This is madness, we’re producing meat we would never feed our kids.” And that became the benchmark for Pipers: “to provide meat that we would be happy to feed our own children”. The couple was inspired by the low input farming they had experienced in New