I WAS pleased to read in last week's Hereford Times, that a planning application to install four broiler units on a farm near Ledbury has been withdrawn, after hundreds of objections.

In Clehonger we face a similar application for four broiler units for flocks of up to 212,000 broiler chickens. These will live just 38 days, and then will be replaced by another flock. There will be eight such flocks a year – 1,696,000 chickens in total.

I support farming and rural traditions, but this is not farming. It is the large-scale industrialisation of food production, which is not good for human health, wildlife or the soil.

When large numbers of animals are housed together the threat of disease can only be controlled by antibiotics. Research on antibiotic-resistant bacteria from intensive farming shows that bacteria can be spread to people living several hundred metres away.

Transmission of livestock-associated MRSA ST398 has become a major cause for human infection, according to Dutch and German research.

ANN PEARSON Northam Field, Clehonger