Plans have been submitted for a new pig farm in Northern Ireland which could see over 40,000 pigs going through the facility a year, the Belfast Telegraph reports.
A planning application, it says, has been received by Causeway Coast and Glens Council for a new pig farm at Glenhead Road, Limavady.
Local farmer, Thomas John Simpson, submitted the proposal and it says that it will house more than 2,200 sows.
The paper reports that there are to be 2,247 sows in the new unit and if each sow produces the Norths average of two litters per year and 10 piglets per litter, that will mean well over 40,000 pigs per year going through the proposed farm.
Earlier this year Derek Hall, a pig farmer from Co. Antrim, lodged an application for a pig unit that would house 30,000 pigs and received criticism from locals who cited flood risks, health risks and noise problems.
Simpson, it is reported, has submitted the application jointly with nine other farms.
The pigs would be raised at the Glenhead site until they weighed 30kg and when they reached that weight they would then be moved to one of the nine farms in the co-op for fattening, it says.
The Karro pork processing plant in Cookstown would then slaughter and process the pigs.
Simpson told the paper that this has been in the planning for four years and that he is still waiting for a connection to the electricity grid.
Simpson said that there will be at least a dozen jobs created at the site and many more existing jobs would be safeguarded in the Norths pig processing industry.
At 8.5 acres, the Glenhead road proposal would be smaller in area than the controversial Newtownabbey plan 23 acres.
