Thousands of British cattle reared for supermarket beef are being fattened in industrial scale beef farms, many of them controversial US-style "feedlots" where livestock have significantly reduced or no access to pasture.



Research by the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has established that the UK is now home to a number of large beef herds of up to 3,000 cattle, with many livestock kept for extended periods in grassless pens or yards rather than being grazed or barn-reared.

Intensive beef farms are commonplace in the US but their existence In the UK has not previously been widely acknowledged - and the findings have sparked the latest clash over the future of British farming.

The beef industry says that the scale of operations involved enables farmers to rear cattle efficiently and profitably, and ensure high welfare standards. But critics claim the farms are evidence of a wider intensification of the UK’s livestock sector that’s not being sufficiently debated.

In contrast to large intensive pig and poultry farms, industrial scale beef units do not require a government permit in order to operate, and there are no official records on how many are in operation.

But the Guardian and the Bureau has identified nearly a dozen industrial-scale beef facilities operating across England, including at sites in Kent, Northamptonshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. The largest farms fatten up to 6,000 cattle a year.

Drone footage and satellite images reveal how thousands of cattle are being kept at some sites in outdoor pens, known as corrals, sometimes surrounded by walls, fences or straw bales. All of the images that we have used are of UK farms, in the counties listed above.

Although the cattle will have spent time grazing in fields prior to fattening, at some farms livestock may be confined in pens for up to a quarter of their lives, until they are slaughtered.