Rabbit farm plan is refused
OPPOSITION INCLUDED COMEDIAN RICKY GERVAIS AND PETA
A COUNCIL has rejected a planning application for a rabbit farm which was opposed by more than 130,000 people, including the comedian Ricky Gervais, pictured.
The application, from meat and fur producer T&S Rabbits, was for new buildings at Lyndon Top Farm in Hambleton, near Rutland Water.
The company already has four sites in the UK, selling meat and live rabbits to wholesalers. The company had applied to Rutland County Council for temporary homes for workers on the site, which would have bred about 250 female rabbits every year.
Animal lover Ricky said in a comment about the Rutland farm: “Britain doesn’t need rabbit meat and fur farms. We don’t need to find new ways to exploit animals for our stomachs or our wardrobes.
“If these plans go ahead it will mean thousands of baby rabbits bred and taken from hundreds of mother rabbits who are treated like breeding machines.”
A Change.org petition against the Rutland plan received 134,345 signatures. The bid was also opposed by the international animal rights organisation Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). Senior campaigns manager Kate Werner said at the time that “scores of gentle rabbits” would experience “a lifetime of suffering and an agonising death”.
Under the law, animals cannot be bred and slaughtered for their fur, but it is completely legal if the business is selling the meat from killing the animals to also sell the pelts for things such as scarves, bags, hats and cushions. The fur is then considered a by-product of the meat trade.
T&S already has “free range” rabbit ranches with hutches and outdoor grazing at sites in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Cambridgeshire. The Rutland site would have been one of three new ones in England.
T&S owner Phil Kerry expected to sell 700 pelts and accessories a year at each new facility, plus 2,000 “oven ready” meat packs. Some 2,800 rabbits would go to wholesalers and 700 would sell as pets or to breeders and home farmers.
Mr Kerry has previously said: “Welfare of animals is a priority. Fur is secondary to meat production – we don’t slaughter animals for pelts, that would be illegal. We used to throw pelts away but it doesn’t make financial sense as they have a value and it shows honour to the animal to use every part. I know there’s opposition but, in my view, it’s hollow and doesn’t really mean much.”
However, the decision on the Rutland site was refused by council planning officers, without being considered by elected members on the council’s planning committee. The decision document, published a few weeks ago, states it was refused because the development would have been too big for the area.
The council officer wrote in the official decision: “The agricultural building would be sited on higher ground at unclear levels, it has not been justified by details of its precise use and essential need. The development would be unrelated to existing buildings or landscape features and would appear particularly prominent and would cause significant harm to this largely undeveloped sensitive landscape by altering the undisturbed character of the area and reducing the tranquil perception.”